Waiting for Sunday

chapter 19 - means to an end

He can tell by the color of the sky that he is up way earlier than he ought to be—an almost artificial, murky dark blue, a wilted violet. It's a cloudless, blank expanse, and if not for the sliver of the moon gleaming dully above his head he would be alone in heaven and earth.

Felix hasn't been back to the graveyard in a while, though there's plenty evidence that birds and small rodents and humans have. Sprigs of yellow weeds spring up from the earth between the cobblestones, the grass damp from the night before and the morning's dew. Felix stands under the ivy-choked iron archway at the graveyard's entrance and takes it in. His mind is spinning. His mind, lately, is always spinning—independent of itself, freewheeling out of his body's orbit until it's too far out to even recognize. He thinks about Lillie, the little shocked sound she made when he kissed her. Then he puts on his gardening gloves and doesn't think at all.

The sky melts slowly into soft gray-blue; the threatening whir of car engines wakes up the air. Felix doesn't notice the time slip by, or maybe he does, in the way he's passively aware of sweat condensing and evaporating on his skin. Felix's hair hangs frizzy over his forehead as he crouches over the east pathway, when something kicks the back of his shoe.

"Thought I'd find you here, weirdo," says Quincy. She looms over him, hands deep in the pockets of her yellow puffer jacket. "Why aren't you answering your phone?"

He sets his shovel down and pulls the phone from his pocket, the screen of which shows a tall stack of Quincy's missed calls. Felix sighs and puts it away again. He says, "You look like Paddington Bear."

"Thanks. You look like you just got run over. Tell me what's going on."

Felix grunts as he pulls a particularly stubborn weed from the earth. "Nothing," he says. "The same."

Quincy laughs at that: a full, open laugh, head thrown back."Bullshit."

"Quincy," Felix exhales, "do we have to do this right now?"

"Is it something Reina said to you?" Quincy asks, like Felix said nothing. She doesn't wait for a reply, either, just pushes out a sharp jet of air from between her teeth and scrubs dirt from the toe of her shoe with her other heel. "She doesn't mean to be discouraging. She just doesn't get what we're trying to do."

Felix hangs his head, watching a beetle slowly clamber up a single translucent blade of grass. "But she's right, Q."

Felix isn't looking at her, but he can see the shift in her expression anyhow—like it's translated into the air, a change in temperature, an adjustment in frequency. For as long as he can remember he's been learning Quincy, training his ears to her tune. By now it's second nature.

"Right about what?" Quincy asks. Unassuming. As emotionless as a research question.

"I've been kidding myself," Felix starts, slowly. He takes off his gardening gloves, drops from his crouch into a seat, crossing his legs. "I want to believe there's something we can do about this. When I look at Lillie, I do believe it. It's impossible not to. But then I just—I look away again and the reality seeps in and I can't deny it anymore. This probably won't work, Q. And that means I'm putting Lillie in danger for no reason."

A tune of Quincy's Felix has yet to adjust to, if he ever will, is the tune of her silence, as rare as it is. He can never tell if the undertone of it is understanding, or judgment.

The beetle has reached the grass's tip, and now the blade bends beneath the weight of its little feet. Felix stares at the creature until his eyes begin to strain, and he blinks again, gaze cast up at the overcast sky.

Quincy sits down beside him, flicking him in the arm as she does. "This explains the deluge last night."

"That might've been just—"