Bladed Wings (46 page)

Ten minutes and they got up. Skyler walked ahead toward their car. Seth was about to follow, but she grabbed his shoulder and held him at a stop. “What did you say to her?”

“A couple different things.”

“C’mon,” she said. “You have to tell me.”

“Why?” he asked, his lips curved to a teasing grin. “That conversation was private.”

“You helped her.”

“A little.”

“What did you say?”

He pulled in a long breath of air, sighed, and said, “I was honest with her. I pointed out that she shouldn’t let her parents ruin her life because now she has to grow up and realize that not every part of her family will be good or true.”

“She was okay with that?”

“It’s true,” he said. “Family isn’t a right. It’s not automatic. Sure, they might’ve loved you before, but now they’ve decided that they’d rather have their fights than actually pay attention to their children. Hurting yourselves won’t help you.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. And then I also reminded her that they’re fighting over you guys. She didn’t get it at first, but no one really does. That’s the paradox of these relationships. They’re fighting over who gets to keep who and stay close, but then neither side realized they had a missing daughter. Painful. Tragic. Brutal. And very human.”

“Like you’re not?”

“I’m not sure,” he said.

Chapter 9: Found Prayers

              They parked in front of Kayla’s house. Kayla got out at the same time as Skyler. She said a quick bye to Seth and headed for the front door. Hands in his pockets, he started the walk back to school where he left his car. Half way across the lawn, Skyler stopped them. “He’s a good guy. Isn’t he?”

              Kayla looked back, “I think so. He asked me out tonight.” That part was out before she realized it was a mistake to say.

              “You should go with him.”

              “I shouldn’t leave you guys alone.”

              “We’ll be fine.”

              “You just wandered away and didn’t want to come back,” Kayla said. “How do I know you’ll still be here when I get back?”

              “You don’t. But you’ll have to trust me some time unless you think you’re going to follow me to school tomorrow. Besides,” Skyler said with a nod at the driveway, “they’re home. It’s not like I’m going to sneak out. I just didn’t want to come back, but that’s happened.”

              “You could run.”

              “And you could go out with a guy who dropped everything to help you. Seriously, don’t let him just go home. You still have time to have fun.” She sounded hopeful. “Please.”

              Kayla didn’t want to admit what a difficult decision this became. If she was the really good sister, she would’ve gone inside, but she had to ask, “You’re sure you’ll be okay?”

              A flicker of surprise touched Skyler’s eyes. Kayla knew her sister and how that gesture meant Skyler smelled weakness. “I’ll be fine. It’s late so they probably won’t fight and if it gets bad I’ll just call. Okay?”

              “If anything goes wrong or anything happens, you call, you promise?”

              “Promise,” she said with one arm raised like she stood in court. Without waiting for anything else, she dashed inside and shut the door behind her like she knew that Kayla wouldn’t come home, not yet.

              Seth was a couple houses down. Kayla got back in her car, pulled a U and rolled the car along beside him. Instead of smiling or teasing her when she rolled down the window, he tensed, “What’s wrong?” He glanced around like he expected hidden predators to leap out. Not a bad idea, Kayla thought, with Sasha still out there. But she wouldn’t think about that now. She had some time with him.

              “Nothing,” she smiled. “We got her home safe, she’s fine, so I thought we could go out.” She paused and tried not to sound nervous, “If you still want to, that is.” This was probably stupid she realized in those moments between heartbeats. He saw this part of her life, so of course he wouldn’t want to hang out. Chasing down a rogue sister wasn’t a guy’s idea of fun. Kayla didn’t need Erin’s study of the male mind to figure that one out.

              Kayla kept her eyes on him as he thought through an answer. She didn’t groan even as the instinct pressed up against her. She wanted to sputter an apology and tell him it was fine before she drove back home, parked, and tried to pretend that didn’t break something inside her.

              “You’re sure?” he asked.

              “Yeah. I’m good.”

              “I’m driving,” he said. Kayla smiled and tried not to look too excited, but she was pretty sure she failed. It felt like it had been a long time since she’d smiled like that. Tonight, a movie would have felt exotic. A hamburger would have tasted special. She wanted to sit by this boy and hear his voice and talk to him. She wanted to be close to him, to get to know him, to learn everything about him. Something else glimmered when she thought about convincing him of the truth that he was a good guy too. He shouldn’t feel bad about himself, she thought.

              Kayla knew that she should’ve been drained, but she wasn’t. Everything started to relax because she didn’t have to think about her sister being dead or watching her family explode even more. Instead, she got to talk to Seth.

              He was hesitant at first and didn’t say a lot, but she asked questions and pulled him out. They started to laugh about school and what college might be like. At the same time, Kayla kept getting scared because she didn’t want to bore him, but he asked her questions that felt too random, too boring.

              When Kayla imagined that kind of conversation, she worried she’d freak. Seriously, she thought she’d freeze because she wasn’t that interesting. Youth Group made sense because everyone there had the same basic beliefs. They had the same behaviors. No one was too crazy or dangerous. No insane parties. Nothing dangerous.

              Someone like Seth probably knew tons of people. If nothing else, he saw others’ memories. Whenever he was curious, he could just look into someone’s mind and learn how they spent their Friday nights. Most of Kayla’s Fridays were spent skating, bowling, or most likely studying. But as they drove between freeways and surface streets, he asked her about her favorite color, her family, her friends, her ex-friends like he wanted to study her. It was like she couldn’t bore him no matter how small the details got.

              During one of the rare and small pauses in the conversation, Kayla looked out the window. She saw her reflection smiling back at her because she hadn’t messed this up. The glass was cold, the air warm.

              “Do I get to ask you a question now?”

              “Sure,” he said and pulled his eyes from the road just long enough to flicker a smile in her direction. “What do you want to know?”

              “You know what I want.”

              “Not that.”

              “What could you do?”

              “Nothing.”

              “Now who’s the bad liar?” she asked.

              Kayla didn’t know him that well, but she thought she was getting better at picking up on those little hints of movement along his lips, his eyebrows, his cheeks whenever he wanted to lie or squirm his way somewhere else.

“I know how to lie.” He gripped the steering wheel tighter, exhaled, and said, “Look, there are some things that you just can’t know.”

              “Okay,” Kayla said. “That’s fine. I can think of some secrets that you wouldn’t want to share because they’re just none of my business. But I have to ask one thing.”

              “One thing.”

              “If you told me, are you scared that I’d finally really believe that you’re a bad guy?”

              “Yes.”

              Kayla didn’t expect that answer. She thought he’d play through some more dancing of back and forth. She was supposed to get him to ask. He was supposed to evade with every answer. That’s why she lowered her voice, “I wouldn’t judge you for it.”

              “How can you believe that?”

              She watched him and wouldn’t pull her gaze away, yet he didn’t take his eyes from the road. She got the impression that he didn’t want to see someone looking at him. “If you did something wrong, it wouldn’t matter, because it’s in the past. Maybe you made the wrong choice. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe it was an accident.”

              “I wouldn’t feel anything about an accident.”

              “But you feel guilty?”

              She expected a different evasion again, but for the second time in as many minutes, Seth told her the truth, “Yes.” He flashed a grin empty of any humor. “But guilt doesn’t matter. If someone’s hurt or dead, if there’s a whole in someone’s life, it doesn’t matter what you feel after it’s done. They’re still gone. Someone still has to suffer. That’s not fair, but it’s the truth.”

              “Okay.”

              “Okay?” he asked. This time he looked back at her. “Just okay?”

              “Just okay,” she agreed.

              “I thought you’d try to tell me how redemption is easy if I just lay down my sins.”

              “That’s true,” Kayla smiled this time. “But since you already knew it, I didn’t have to tell you.” This time she was rewarded with the flutter of a smile. “If you want to tell me what happened, you can, and I won’t turn away from you. No matter what happened, I promise you Seth, I’ll be there for you, same way you’ve been there for me. If you don’t want to tell me why you have to cut class every day, I’ll keep pestering you about it because I’m really curious and stubborn. Sorry. Those are some of my flaws.”

              “They’re not flaws.”

              “I don’t think my family would agree with you there,” she said. That same sticky, cold feeling crawled up from her stomach, but she wouldn’t let those problems ruin these moments with him.

              “Flaws are only a problem when everyone around you doesn’t like them.”

              “Who likes stubborn?”

              “I do,” he said.

This time Kayla didn’t make eye contact. Without the light, there was a good chance he wouldn’t notice a shade of red touch her cheeks. Kayla hated blushing. It was like her face wanted to tell on her. “You do?” At least she didn’t hear any breaks when she asked.

“Stubborn is good,” he said. “Most people aren’t stubborn enough. They don’t push hard enough.” He smirked, “But maybe I feel that way since I spend a lot of time shoving people around. That should make a bully, right?”

“Depends,” she said.

“Really?” he asked. “It’s immoral. I remove people’s ability to choose for themselves. It doesn’t seem like there’s anything worse than that. A little bit of effort and I take away everything they want to be.”

“It still depends,” Kayla said and savored that brief second of confusion which played out on his face. It was hard to get that kind of reaction out of him. It made him look interested and let her imagine that maybe she could have a chance. “What do you do with these abilities? Sure, you’d be a jerk if you just make people dance for you or something. But so far, I haven’t seen you do anything really bad.” Kayla paused for dramatic effect, one finger against her bottom lip, “In fact, every time you’ve used your abilities, it’s been to help someone.”

“That’s all you’ve seen.”

“So you made someone dance?” she asked. “Like with a funny hat?”

Seth glanced down, his chin against his chest. “No, I never did that.”

“Unfunny hat?”

“You know I wouldn’t do something like that.”

“Exactly,” Kayla agreed. “Which means you just agreed with me.”

“Can I ask you something? Seriously now?” he asked. Kayla gave a quick sure, not sure where he’d go. “If none of the nascent stuff happened, what would you be doing now?”

“You’re thinking about the Alliance?”

“I don’t believe it,” he told her. “We’re not angels and we’re not demons. I get that.”

“How can you tell?”

“I don’t believe in them.” He said. “There’s nothing good, not like that. But it doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t really care if I were wrong. What I want to know is what you’d do if your results come back and Vigo says you’re a demon? Maybe his special test will come back with something that says you’re fundamentally evil.”

“Simple,” Kayla said. She wanted that to come out light and easy, maybe even flirtatious, but she was never good at that. “I don’t believe in demons.”

“But you still think angels are real?”

“Yes.”

“So heaven with no hell?”

“Exactly,” Kayla said. “I don’t want to think about a universe where anyone has to suffer forever. That’s just not right.” She pushed a bang of hair back behind her ear because that was supposed to look cute and it was easier than reading his expression.

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Seth didn’t sound mean about it, just disoriented. “Seriously, how does that even work?”

“Okay,” Kayla said. “Just look at it this way. We’re alive for sixty, seventy, maybe eighty years. It looks like a long time, but it’s really not. I mean, the universe is supposed to go on for a couple trillion more years, and that’s still nothing compared to eternity. It’s not fair that you mess up here and then have to suffer for infinity.”

“Makes sense.”

“But you don’t believe me?”

“I think there has to be punishment.”

“Maybe there is,” Kayla said. “But even then, that’s not something we get to decide.”

“We talk about it all the time,” Seth said. “All around us, people make judgments about one another. I hear it every day in the way people think about each other. Sometimes it’s stupid. She wore an ugly shirt. He acted like a jerk. But then you get anything else and people are still brutal. As a species, we’d sentence every last one of ourselves to hell forever.”

“And you think we’re right.”

“Sometimes,” Seth said.

“You’re wrong.”

“You keep saying that.”

Kayla nodded, a little too excited, a little too cheerful, “And I’m going to keep saying it until you believe me because it’s true and you shouldn’t feel bad about things you can’t change, especially if you’re working and trying to be a better person.”

“Someday, I’ll probably tell you what happened.”

“You could do it now.”

“I’ll tell you,” Seth told her like she didn’t say anything. “And you’ll know. You’ll know you shouldn’t be near me. You’ll know that I’m dangerous. You’ll know that I’m not worth your time.” He shook his head, “You’ll know that I don’t really care about you. Because if I did, I would have walked away. I wouldn’t be here now.”