(Price: unedited)
“You’ll hate me,” she had said.
Tear-filled, fragile, and poised for flight. She had lingered the end of his hospital bed like a specter, enormous eyes set in a shrunken body.
Right then, his head still throbbing and his veins filled with morphine, he hadn’t believed her. After all, how was it possible? He had spent the past few months watching her awaken, and he couldn’t understand what would pierce through that happy haze.
Standing under a constellation of Disney posters, arms locked by his sides, he understood. He knew why she had been so scared – and how clearly she had known that she was right.
He did hate her.
He hated her enough to uncurl his fists, to flex his shaking fingers, to image blood leaking from the corner of her icy mouth. He hated her enough to abandon her – to aim a few pained sentences at her crumbling defenses, in hopes that the weight would crush her. He hated her more than the peppy, caffeinated nurses, or Lily, who wound her arms around him and sobbed into his shoulder, as if she was incapable of doing anything else.
He should hate her.
Enough to kiss her until she couldn’t breathe, to slide his hands through her midnight hair and pin her against the wall of fear and destruction that she had placed between them. He should hate her enough to drown with her, to pull her into the daydreams that bled into reality. He should hate her more than he wanted her in his arms.
He couldn’t hate her.
Not even when he was looming over his little sister’s scarred body, watching her cheeks flush scarlet as she struggled to pull air into her polluted lungs.
While he had been playing savior at the lake, the church had gone up in flames. Jewel had been trapped inside. Supposedly, Nolan set it on fire before he left. Price was almost glad that he wasn’t still alive, because as much as he wanted to hate Ariel, he wanted to kill the dead delinquent.
“Price?” His mother nudged him with her elbow. She was holding two Styrofoam cups filled with coffee that smelled almost as bitter as his anger. “I can sit with her for a little bit.”
Price wrapped his fingers around the cup and brought it to his lips, grimacing as it burned down his throat. He glanced over at Jewel while he sipped. She was still sleeping. He had failed to save her, the little girl who should have been the most important thing to protect. And he wasn’t leaving until she woke up; partly because he wanted to know she was alive, and partly because he planned on apologizing.
Until he choked. Until she was healed, wheeling out of the hospital with her shaky little voice whispering one of her mournful songs. Until Ariel came back, or he banished the idea from his mind.
“It’s fine.” He stretched his legs out in front of him. His boots were scuffed and covered with dirt; his pants were riddled with holes. They were out of place in this pristine jungle, with colorful walls and sterilized happiness.
Lily sighed. She took a delicate drink of her coffee and leaned her palm against her forehead, supporting her frazzled emotions. “Well, I hate to leave, but I couldn’t get off work. I mean,” she said quickly, as Price scoffed, “I got the twelve to five shift. Which is the shortest one.”
She was quiet for a moment, gaze sliding over the still form of her daughter. Her jaw was working and she looked inches from tears. Price, torn between anger and sympathy, reached out and laced his fingers through hers.
“I’ll call you when she wakes up.”
“Right. And…I’ll bring dinner. Peanut butter pie.” Lily squeezed his hand, taking another deep breath. “Her favorite.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Price gulped the last of his coffee and crumpled it into a paper projectile that slammed into the bedside trash can with ferocious velocity. Jewel didn’t stir as her mother kissed her forehead, whispering goodbye as she backed out of the room.
“Don’t leave,” she said to Price. And then, turning her back on his lopsided glare, she walked away.
He scooted his chair closer to the bed. His little sister was even smaller up close, tucked like a doll underneath a pile of stiff blankets. Her golden hair had been braided, and tickled the side of her freckled face. She looked like an angel, around whom his flimsy world revolved.
Should have revolved, he reminded himself. It had seemed like such a silly, inconsequential thing, but the truth behind should hit him square between the eyes. Those six letters hurt worse than his shoulder, still encased in plastic. Close enough to the pain of a bullet wound to render him speechless.
They hadn’t told him about Jewel until he was well under the influence of the painkillers, too drowsy to even lift his head from the flat, standard issue pillow.
Lily, flanked by two policemen – the same ones who had rescued him, he thought – had been sobbing, words knotted together. She tripped over her sentences so much that it took two times of telling for the truth to sink in.
It should have come as no surprise that, in the chaos of evacuation, Jewel had gotten left behind. But that hurt, too. The fact that she was as invisible as Ariel. And as much as he liked Ariel, with all of her tragic flaws, he didn’t want his sister to end up like her. When he tried to imagine her trapped inside, all he could picture was flames and screaming.
It was a miracle that she was still alive.
But then again, Jewel had always been a miracle child. It was in her nature.
The real reason he should hate Ariel was that his little sister was damaged. She had been trapped inside the building for thirty minutes, and she had wide reddish, oozing burns on arms and legs from the fire and whatever smoking objects she had stumbled against. The tips of her hair were singed. Her lungs had taken smoke damage.
Every time she coughed, he thought about the cigarettes. How Ariel smelled like cigarette smoke and coconuts, and how her voice scratched against her sentences when they came out of her throat.
He missed her, even as he leaned over and brushed the hair off of Jewel’s flushed face. For the past few days, he had been distilling his hatred. He wanted it gone – and at the same strange time, he wanted the object of it here.
He wondered if Jewel would awaken for Ariel. Struggle to speak. If they would sit, mangled arms wrapped around each other, and communicate in a way that he couldn’t understand.
If he should call her. And if it would really make a difference, because she had gone away without even a goodbye, and his phone was achingly silent.
You’ll hate me, she had said. He had been fumbled for words before. Now, he knew exactly what he wanted to say.
No, he’d reply, I hate that because you were so sure I would hate you, you shut me out again.
***
One solitary week later, Jewel was released from the hospital.
It was a beautiful day, and she had been smiling wider than he had ever seen when she tripped out the sliding doors. She stuck out her arms like a bird in flight and twirled around, wincing just a little bit as the breeze tickled her sensitive skin.
“I’m okay, Price.” She waved him away when he swooped in to still her, afraid that she was going to fall and tear open her healing wounds. “Okay?”
He smiled at her, throat closing. God, but he was happy that she was still alive. And talking – when she had woken up, she told him a story. About a girl and a boy who were a beautiful mess, and who needed to remember to call each other.
He had laughed, tousled her hair. Told her that she knew too much about the world. About him. And she did – but then again, Jewel was a miracle child.
“Okay, kid.” He said now, stepping back. He couldn’t stop himself from tapping the top of her head, just to make sure that she was made of flesh and bones, and not as insubstantial as she looked with the sun shining on her face.
She clambered in the passenger’s seat before he could stop her. Because she had just been released from the hospital, he couldn’t really deny her anything, so he reached over and slid the seatbelt over her small chest.
“Do we have ice cream?” She tried to speak around a fit of rasping coughs.
Price alternated glances between her and the road as he exited the parking lot. The hospital was fading into the skyline behind them, another piece of their past that lingered, like a bread crumb trail, in their wake. “We ran out.” He turned left on the road into town. “You wanna stop for some?”
She nodded vigorously. “Please.” She whispered. “My throat…”
“Hurts. I know, kid. I’m sorry.”
Buildings began to blur past, the familiar brick and cobblestone that had framed his childhood. McGowan Markets loomed further down the road, a shining plastic gem in a sea of history. Price was prepared to drive by it, leaving it behind. There were other places to buy ice cream – places that didn’t hold humiliation, or memories of his father.
Jewel tugged on his elbow. “Stop! You’re missing it.”
“What?” Price tapped the gas, trying to change lanes to miss the turnoff.
“The store.” She said petulantly. “Charliegh’s store.”
The thought stopped him short. He hadn’t seen Charliegh since the lake incident. Despite their previous history, he was concerned. How was she handling Nolan’s death, and the aftermath of his abuse? The last thing he wanted to do was enter a place that evoked so much hurt and confusion. But if he gave up on reconciliation, after all he had done to her, was he bound to do the same to Ariel?
Inches before passing the store – Charliegh’s store – he whipped into the edge of the parking lot, narrowly avoiding a battered blue truck. There was an ache in his stomach as he pulled the car into an empty space and climbed out.
What if she had deteriorated? What if he ruined things again, allowing his anger to overrule his common sense?
He followed Jewel through the doors, trying to focus on the butterfly movements of his very alive little sister. But his mind kept wandering. To the display case, where Earnest and Viv had met. To the narrow back aisles, where they had formulated their plan of escape. To the sluggish lines of the cash registers, and the empty space in the bakery.
Everything was familiar, in the worst possible way. His throat constricted, and then his chest, and he thought he was going to do something ridiculous. Like break down into tears, in the middle of a place that bred deterioration.
“Charliegh!” Jewel, through the untimely sheen of his gaze, was smiling again. She threw her arms around the waist of the wan girl. “I missed you,” she said quietly, voice muffled.
Charliegh smiled down at her. “I missed you, too. Did you come for ice cream?”
“Is it that obvious?” Price asked. He tried to crack a grin, but it felt tight on his face. Jewel withdrew to wander down the aisle, fingerprinting the glass doors of the freezers.
“Maybe.” She tipped her head, taking him in. He stared right back. She was different – her hair had been dyed back to a solid, manageable brown. The scratches and burns on the lower half of her face were fading. She still moved carefully, recovering from her bruises.
There was a spark in her smile, one that he hadn’t seen for years. Or maybe he had never seen it at all. It was the type of smile people imagined, because it seemed genuinely happy. Despite her obvious wounds, she was moving past the lake scene much faster than he was.
“I wanted to apologize.” The words tumbled from his lips. His cheeks burned, the muscles in his jaw clenching his teeth together.
“We all make mistakes, Price.” Her voice was gentle. “I’ve made lots.”
“I know. No,” he said brusquely, “I don’t. I don’t – I didn’t – I shouldn’t have hit you. And I can’t get past that. Not like you.”
“What if I’m not past it?” She touched her lip unconsciously, eyes fastened on the ceiling. She seemed to be relieving some painful memory, enough to rattle the joy from her smile. “I think I understand now, how you were always so angry. And I can’t really accept what you did, because I’m still working through things, but I get it.”
“I didn’t expect anything, C. I just wanted to say it.”
“Testing the waters again?” She asked, but she was smiling again. “I’m glad you decided to say it. Maybe then you could come back to work. I can’t tell you how many carts I’ve hit backing out of the parking lot.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Oh, terrible.”
Jewel had returned with three cartons of ice cream tucked in her arms, and Price grabbed one, fingers sliding against the condensation. He stood by uncertainly as Charliegh gave his little sister a parting hug.
“Come visit me again, okay?” She said. She straightened and looked at Price. “You too.”
“Right. Maybe. Sometime.” He backed away, waiting until Jewel followed. “Goodbye, Charliegh.”
“Bye, Price.”
He waved, and turned to walk away. There was a feeling in his stomach that his apology had been inferior, and that leaving a girl with the memories of two dead boyfriends and an I’m sorry was a poor substitute for genuine emotion.
He let Jewel slide the cartons over the self-checkout and gave her five dollars to feed into the machine. After capturing his receipt, he looped the plastic bag around one wrist and headed back to the frozen aisle. Charliegh was still standing there, rearranging icy vegetables in one freezer. She jumped when he tapped her shoulder, a bag of peas tumbling from her hands and onto the cracked tile floor.
“I thought you left.” She bent to pick up the bag. She bit her lips as she moved, caging her pain behind her composure yet again. There was strength in her weakness, how she glanced up with defiant eyes, suffering quietly.
“I was going to leave.” He unwound the bag from his hands and pulled out one of the cartons. She stared at it for a few seconds, resting solidly in the center of his palm. “But I’m sorry didn’t seem good enough.”
She reached out cautiously, fingers sliding around the ice cream and pulling it away. She cradled it against her side, as if unsure whether to be grateful or afraid. But when she glanced up, the edges of her lips were curved in a tentative smile. “Thank you,” she whispered.
He swallowed. It felt as if they were suspended in times – standing in the dirty aisles of McGowan Markets, swapping smiles, no fearful cloud of the future hovering over their conversations. Then he moved, turning on his heel, and the moment was broken.
“You’re welcome.” He said. And he took Jewel’s hand, chubby palm squishing against his, and walked away.
He was leaving her behind again. But this time, there was no blood on his hands, anger in his veins. There was an angel beside him and two cartons of ice cream bumping into his hip.
It wasn’t a grandiose thing. It was still cold outside, and Charliegh was still suffering inside the store, working past the ghosts of those who had loved her and left. It was a February morning where the world wasn’t righted. But it had been readjusted; slowly but surely.
That was enough.
***
The radio was blaring Nirvana. The gritty, glum sound drifted around the corners, sliding under the cracked windows, swelling through the empty house. The dishwasher and the heating vents were rattling in tempo, the floor under his feet shivering with the combination of ice and anger.
Price was lying on the couch, submerged in the music. His eyes were fastened on the screen in front of him – the blank, dark glass of his cell phone. One foot was swinging, fingers twitching impatiently over the empty calls.
Everyone but Ariel had been ringing the house, sending sentiment to Jewel or apologies to him. Most inquired about his shoulder; none asked about who had pulled the trigger. It had taken three months for his life to shift, semantic plates splitting open beneath his feet. Yet the very girl that settled in his memories, prickling behind his eyes like the dust in the air, had vanished.
He was nervous. More than nervous – scared. She had left Redemption for her brother’s wedding, jetting off to Chicago to spend a week with the very forces who were ruining her life. What if she had fallen over the edge? What if she had become hypnotized with her idealistic idea of everyone fading away?
The sound of angst shuddered, the radio fusing with static. A jangled, sugary pop tune drifted over the speakers, effectively killing his mood of contemplation. Seconds away from heaving himself off the couch to change the station, the screen before him glowed white. His phone buzzed, and silver letters spelling out Ariel Fontansia popped up.
He fumbled to swipe his finger across the dirty screen. His limbs felt stiff, disconnected, and he took a deep breath before pressing the phone to his ear. “Hey.”
“Hi,” she said quietly. “Can I ask you a question?”
His heart raced. Probably too fast for one question, but he pushed his thoughts aside. “Yeah, sure. Shoot.”
“Can I come inside?”
“What?”
“I’m in the driveway.” She laughed, half-nervous. “Sorry. I was going to call – I mean, I am calling – but I haven’t. I was busy. You know. My brother got married and all.”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat, wincing. “I heard about that. Congratulations.”
“I guess.”
“Right. Well, you know, you can come inside.” He swung his feet over the edge of the couch and pulled himself up. The window blinds were cracked half-open, and he could see her battered red car parked clumsily in the driveway. While he was standing there, staring, the car door was pushed open and Ariel stepped out.
“Price?” This far, he couldn’t see her lips moving. But he could tell that she wasn’t smiling. “Are you there?”
“What? Um, yeah. Just a second.”
He cradled the phone between his ear and his shoulder and ran his hands through his hair. And then, there was a knocking on the door, and his heart was pounding. Suddenly, he was touching the doorknob, staring at the backside of the seedy wooden door.
Ariel was standing on the edge of the porch, so far away that he was surprised she had ventured close enough to knock. Her arms were wrapped around her ribcage, and her expression was unreadable as she gave him a weak smile. “Hey, Price.”
“Hey.” He said. He cracked the door open a little wider, trying to smile. But, God if it didn’t hurt to see her right in front of him. Alive, breathing, and as edgy as ever. “You wanna come in?”
She shook her head. “I’m okay.”
“Really?” He stepped outside and closed the door behind him. The sky, in a glance, was grey and swollen with clouds, and the air cut through his thin thermal shirt with knife-like intensity.
“I just came to ask a question.”
“I thought you already asked it.”
“Well, two questions.” She smiled a little wider. “Is that okay?”
“Fine. Yeah, fine.” He grimaced. Breathing normally was impossible as she edged a little closer, still poised for flight.
Up close, she didn’t look any healthier that when she had left. But, she didn’t look any thinner either. Her legs still curved like conch shells, and her collarbone protruded over the edge of her red jacket. Her cheeks were hollow and her hair was thin. And as she stepped even closer, her familiar scent of cigarette smoke had faded.
Price shifted, discomfited. He could see the whites of her eyes, the long black curve of her lashes as she glanced down at her feet, blinking away her confidence. “So. You had a question?”
“What would you say if I said I that decided fading away wasn’t worth it?”
“Well,” he whispered, hands moving restlessly by his sides. His skin prickled, shoulders shifting as he bolstered his courage. Something about Ariel made him unaccountably nervous. But he would not, would not, be distracted by that today. “I’d say that I have a question.”
She dropped her arms. It was the first time he had seen her look truly vulnerable; soul bared, problems and insecurities exposed. She was weak, he realized. She wasn’t strong and guarded and mysterious. She was scared. Human.
The thought made him brave as he reached out, resting his hands lightly on the edges of her jacket.
“Ask away,” she said, tipping her head back.
He was going to repeat the cafeteria question: can I kiss you? But her pupils were dilated and his heart was hammering, so he simply slid his hands underneath her jacket, fitting them neatly around her tiny waist. He leaned his forehead on hers.
She didn’t smell like cigarettes anymore, but it wasn’t a terrible thing. It meant that instead of carrying death around in the hollows of her mind, she was carrying hope. A hope that smelled like coconuts and the grey sunshine of her smile.
“I’m sorry.” She said, breathless. “For not calling you.”
“Don’t apologize,” he said. “I’m answering your question.”
Fingers light on her bones, he bent forward and pressed his mouth against her parted lips. She tasted like redemption, and, as he pressed closer, she didn’t bolt. She stayed and kissed him back, burying her fingers in the curls of his crumpled hair.
And so they figured out forgiveness: merging together underneath the gloom of the February sky; limbs interconnected; regrets captured with each harried breath; carving out the future upon the rickety steps of his front porch.
***