Cornerstone (18 page)

“Bart Cubulick, ninety-three, thought of his mother everyday; Phi Tan, eighty-six, fished for his family without complaint; Shelly Lennon, twelve...”

I listen to my mother’s feverish simmer of useless names and stories and every word she speaks becomes a pair of sharp, fierce teeth gnawing at my stomach. She hasn’t explained anything to me. All she’s done is cry on Mr. Reese’s shoulder as if I am her personal tragedy.

Feeling so cut off from her is like swimming in the pit of a well. I’m struggling to figure out what is going on and she isn’t even trying to help keep my head above water. When our house was on the verge of being condemned due to the amount of paper, she’d said a change of view would be nice. When we ran out of money and had to go on welfare, she said we might as well get a little back from all the taxes we’d paid in. I’ve always relied on her telling me things are going to be fine, whether or not I believed her.

I realize that it’s always been me and her, except that while I’m stuck here sinking on my own, it suddenly seems like a lot more of me making things work and dealing with it all, than her. And, with her not saying a word to me now, the little jaws snap at my gut as she mutters—setting up her usual escape into her writing so she won’t have to talk. I decide to head her off before that happens.

“I guess I just go this one alone.” I mutter. The bitterness in my voice finds its target and she turns her head, the fog of names lifting as she blinks at me.

“Go what alone?” she asks. From the corner of my eye, Garrett pauses from clearing the bottles of salad dressing off the table. The other Reese’s go quiet, but continue cleaning up.

“Me!” I snap at her. “Remember how you were crying before dinner? I’m doomed...remember? That.
That’s
what I’m going alone.”

My mom blinks again and her expression clears and then crumples, as if she’s slapped me in a nightmare and just woken up. She gets to her feet, pulling my hand along with her.

“We need to talk.” she says.

I jerk my hand away from her but Garrett murmurs, “Go Nalena. Go talk with her.”

I feel younger than Iris as I follow my mother into the living room. My mom pushes my pillow aside on the couch and sits, patting the cushion next to her. I fall down beside her, pulling my comforter around me.

“Bet you’re confused.” my mom says. “I just want you to listen to me and I’m going to tell you what’s going on.”

“Everything?”

“Yes, everything.” she says. The thread of a shiver slips down my spine, but I remain quiet and still.

Her brow puckers in the center. “You’ve been given a different ancestral sign than the one I was expecting. I’d been watching all along for a sign of Alo, and I was hoping we’d reach your eighteenth birthday without one. It would mean that you wouldn’t be involved in all this. But I never thought to look for a different sign. I assumed that some of your preferences, like your love for running, was attributed to your Alo heritage. We’re phenomenal runners. But it’s also a sign of the Contego and I’m sorry I didn’t think to look for that.

“I should’ve known better when you first came home from school and told me you didn’t feel right. The sign of Contego can first show itself when you feel threatened or in danger. You weren’t sick. Your column of chakras, the energy points inside you, had aligned when the girl at school threatened you. It was perfectly normal.

“Our community has four blood lines. The Veritas are those who manage the exchanges of energy in the world and keep things as balanced as they can, the Addos are those chosen to lead the individual Ianua communities…we call them Curas…” She pauses a moment to lick her lips as if she knows I’m on the verge of screaming. “The Alo, like me, are the ones who record the memories of the deceased to retain their knowledge for use to us on Earth and the Contego, like the Reese’s, protect us all.”

“Stop doing this.” I tell her, but she shakes her head.

“Listen to me. This was my mistake. I didn’t expect you to receive any other sign than Alo. This kind of thing only happens when there is a Cusp. I guess it is the universe’s way of making sure the Alo are protected and the Ianua is preserved during times of trouble.”

“Stop! Stop! Stop!” I jump to my feet, shouting at her. My nerves feel electrocuted. The Reese’s go quiet in the other room and I grasp my own forearms, biting my lip. “Whatever game you’re all playing, you got me!”

“Nalena...what I do,” my mom starts again. Her eyes are glossy.

“I don’t care what you do!”

The phone rings. We both go silent as I hear Sean say hello and then there is a long pause, like before.

“For Sean, press one...” He sighs and goes through the list of Reese boys like he did earlier, reminding whoever is on the other end that Garrett is taken. It should make me happy, but instead, I am sitting here with my cast crossed over my chest, feeling like everyone is in on the joke but me. Sean hangs up and Mrs. Reese asks him what’s new in his philosophy class. Sean sputters a hollow answer and Mr. Reese fills the void, asking Garrett about finals. Their conversation starts up again, giving us our privacy. My mom rubs her brow, pulling at the skin with her fingertips.

“Garrett’s taken?” she asks. “With you?”

Thankfully, her voice is low enough that it hardly makes it to me. Garrett won’t be able to hear her in the kitchen.

“Maybe.” I say. “Maybe’s he’s not so out of my league after all.”

My mom’s face tightens.

“Nalena. He was
never
out of your league. But he is Contego.” Her brows ripples with worry as she drops her voice even lower. “How taken is he with you? What has he told you about being Contego?”

“Can we just drop all this?”

“Listen to me.” she says. “I just want to be sure that you don’t make any decisions, based on a high school crush. You have a chance to choose differently and I want you to have a normal life. Something away from all this. Please, Nalena.”

“Please what?” My whisper sizzles, trying to get my mom to keep her voice down too. “Are you trying to tell me who I can
like
?”

“I don’t want him to influence you!” She explodes in tears as she jumps off the couch.

“I’m going to be sick!” she howls and she runs out of the living room, scuttling up the stairs and slamming the bathroom door behind her.

~ * * * ~

I sit outside the bathroom door with Iris and Mrs. Reese, listening to my mother’s echoing retch.

“She’s frowing up?” Iris whispers as my mom starts up again.

Mrs. Reese nods to her daughter and taps on the door, “Can I help, Evangeline?”

“I’m okay.” my mom coughs. Iris looks between her mother and I, shaking her head.

“Frowing up’s not okay.” she says.

“Let’s give her some space. She’ll be fine.” Mrs. Reese stands and puts her hand on my shoulder, rubbing gently, just like my mom would. I can’t even look at her.

“Hang in there.” she says as she pulls her hand away. She looks down at her daughter. “And you need a bath before bed, Iris. Let’s get you into the tub downstairs.”

“The boy’s bathroom?” Iris scrunches up her nose. “Not the boy’s bathroom, Mama! There’s no toys in there!”

“We’ll find something.” Mrs. Reese promises. She guides Iris downstairs by pushing her along, a hand on her back. I am left sitting in the upstairs hallway, unable to even speak a word of comfort through the door. I listen to my mom throwing up again.

“Hey.” Garrett’s voice is behind me. I turn and look down the short staircase. He’s standing on the main floor, leaning on the railing. “Wanna get out of here?”

“No.” I am miserable. “My mom’s sick.”

“We can stick around here if you want.” he says. “But it’s not going to do any good for you to stand there listening.”

I’m sure he’s right, but as I get up and walk away from the bathroom door, guilt and relief tumble inside me like dirty socks. We go down to the family room and sit beside one another on the couch.

“Feel like a movie?” he asks.

“Not really.”

“You a gamer? We have a few video games.”

“No thanks.”

“Talk?”

I shake my head, offering a weak smile of apology.

“All right. Then let’s do something else.” he says, standing up. He puts out his hand to me. I take it without asking what we are going to do. I don’t know if I even care. His hand is dry and smooth and I can feel his pulse in the center of my palm. Or maybe it is mine. Whatever it is, it doesn’t feel like a joke. Or just a crush.

We walk down the hall that stems away from the family room. On the left, the bathroom door is open and Iris is belting out a tuneless song beneath the rinse that Mrs. Reese pours over her daughter’s head.

“Keep your mouth closed.” Mrs. Reese tells her, but I doubt Iris hears a word since she never stops singing. She just sputters under the waterfall.

Garrett points to a door on the right.

“The basement.” he says. “Also, Sean’s room, the laundry room, and our gym equipment.”

We pass the basement door and Garrett draws my hand closer to his chest. My shoulder almost rubs his back as we walk. We head toward the dark oak door at the end of the hall.

“My room.” he says, twisting the knob. He drops my hand and goes in, leaving me at the threshold. The dark, handsome smell of him is here too, like a twin. I inhale him as casually as I can, in long greedy breaths.

He crosses the room and pulls back the deep chocolate-colored curtains from a long rectangle window. The glass panes are just above ground level outside. The moonlight still finds its way in.

My feet sink into the soft carpet. Dark wood closet doors line the wall in front of me, a desk is on my left with a reclining office chair tucked beneath.

There is a black-framed collage of textured art above his bed. A silver branch, an ocean wrinkle, one speckled pearl, a corner of the moon. I spend a long time looking at the collage because it seems wrong to look at his bed. I avoid it, even though it takes up most of the room.

Garrett walks over to the desk and turns on a lamp. He leans across the desk and flips switches on a portable stereo. Since he seems absorbed, I finally steal a look at his bed.

The bed is a mattress on an oversized wood platform, the headboard a polished rectangle. The comforter is black with a beige stripe and there is a long white tube pillow against the headboard with two pillows resting on top, which are the exact color of Garrett’s eyes. I think of Garrett sleeping there, and waking there, and lying with me there.

He pulls his chair out from beneath the desk and my eyes move from his bed and crash right into his gaze. I blush.

“Have a seat.” He grins and looks back at the music box. I do what he wants, making it to the chair on numb legs. He turns on the music and drops down on his bed, leaning back on his palms. “Just listen.” he says, as if I can concentrate in his bedroom.

The music begins with muted chords of a guitar; the beat as deep and dark as shadows. It is haunting and beautiful and it pulls me in. I could sleep here, tipped back in his pillowy leather chair.

Garrett startles me when he leans off the bed. He pushes his hair behind his ear and switches off the lamp. His profile floats in my head a second after it actually disappears into the dark.

He is erased to nothing but a silhouette in the moonlight. I trace his darkness, the smooth muscles of his arms and the narrow taper of his waist. A burst of anxiety darts through me at the thought of Mrs. Reese finding us and shamefully chasing me out of this cocoon, or his brothers, disturbing this warm space with their thunderous laughter, or of my mother, healed and calling for me. I want this second of my life, filled with the muted chords and the silver twilight, to go on forever. I want his shadow to come closer, to lean in so I feel the heat of his body like a blanket on my skin. I want him to kiss me.

Instead, he settles on his bed, leaning back on his hands, the same way he was before. I feel him watching me through the darkness.

“Garrett?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Mmm hmm.”

“It’s important.” I say. “I need you to tell me the truth.”

“I will.”

“Do you think my mom needs help?”

His voice is an anchor. “No.”

“Then, is this...is it all a joke?”

“No, it’s not.” he says. “What your mom’s telling you is real. It’s all the truth.”

“So what’s the big deal then?”

“I know this is a lot to get all at once, but you’ve been given a sign. What your mom does is vital to all of us.”

“This is insane.”

“It scares you.” he rephrases. Maybe with the lights on, it would scare me less, but I doubt it. Still, I’m not going to sound like a coward if this actually becomes a story passed around in school.

“No it doesn’t.” I lie.

“You know, you don’t have to choose this if you don’t want it.” he says. I don’t answer. I’ll have to leave out the part about how she warned me about making a decision based on the feelings I have for him. “The Ianua are born with two destinies instead of just one. We have a clearer choice in which path we take.”