Red Moon Rising

52. skin

Chapter Song: Ebb and Flow - Larry and His Flask

XX

"Are you dizzy?"

Jack is holding open the passenger door of an SUV, staring at me with a furrowed brow.

"I'm fine. Thanks." I'm thankful that he doesn't try to help me into the cab, even though I struggle to lift myself up. Still, I can feel his hands hovering behind me, waiting to catch me, and it makes me want to shove him a little farther back. I think he knows it when he shuts the door behind me.

The first part of the drive bears a quiet sort of tension, both of us lost in our own silence while the weight of words unspoken between us never fully disappears. Though it's still dark, the moon illuminates the narrow, paved road running through the territory, pale faces of houses glowing against the snow until we pass into the wilderness of St. Croix.

"You'll drive yourself crazy doing that."

I look up to find Jack glancing at me from the corner of his eye.

"What?"

"Looking for him everywhere you go."

I set my jaw and turn back to the window. He doesn't understand how easily I can see Isaac's face in the shadows, how his words are burned into my mind. I need you. It wasn't some declaration of love, but a desperate plea, a promise that I couldn't leave him behind for very long. "You would be doing the same thing if you were me."

"I know."

But this wouldn't have happened to him. Does he understand that? Does he think of me as some special sort of coward? In the end, I needed him to escape. I know it, but I won't say it. It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

I wonder if Jack even gets off on it, knowing that he's the reason I'm still alive.

"Hey, look up, Layla."

I'm about to snap at him for having the audacity to say a thing like that to me right now, but then I look up out the window and find that I've forgotten how to breath. "Oh."

The highway turned to interstate turned to six lane stretches of darkness broken by glowing taillights. But it isn't just the volume of cars that is so striking to me, or the way the road twists over and under itself in a series of bridges and tunnels, but the glow of the city stretching before me that even turns the black sky above a dim golden hue. There are no stars here, but the earth itself is alight, rolling land lit by networks of light like lace.

"That's the Minneapolis skyline ahead," he says quietly. "This road runs all the way north to Duluth."

"I don't know if I love or hate it," I confess. "There's no room to run, only roads and buildings."

"Believe it or not, Minneapolis has more trees and parks than most cities."

"What am I looking at?" I ask the question before I can help it, and in his usual thoughtful silence, Jack glances at me quickly before pointing to different buildings and landmarks and telling me about them. Strangely, I don't mind that his voice fills the car, quiet yet with a gripping presence. He points out apartment buildings and office parks, night clubs and warehouses. And then we're arching onto a bridge over pure sparkling blackness that reflects the city right back in shimmering ripples, and I begin to cry, and Jack falls silent. With the Mississippi River below us and the Minneapolis skyline looming ahead, I try to etch the sight of each strangely glowing sign into my mind, staring with a sinking heart at the brilliant red letters of the Gold Medal Flour building.

This isn't my world. I don't belong here, among these people who pay no mind to the full moon, or curses, or fate. But for the first time I think of how lovely it would be to be so terribly human, to drive over this bridge at night and know I was going home, that I could walk down any street in this beautiful, horrible city and see myself in the people around me.