Pale: 6.8 - Lucy

Cutting Class – 6.8 | Pale
“Heads up.  The bitch marches.”

Lucy, unable to hear the whisper, walked over to the window, while Verona took the sink closest to the end, pulling out paper towels and running the sink, so she could get the ink stain that had spread where her pen had leaked into her pocket.

Lucy, hearing the whisper, paused, while Verona kept walking.  She glanced at the cluster of girls who’d gathered around one sink, not doing anything except talking.  Some of them glanced at her, smirking.

“What?” that Verona asked, looking back.  She turned the sink on.

There were two Lucys.  One that didn’t hear, and one that did.  The world peeled into two overlapping sequences of events.  In some, the actions like Aubrey scratching at the little soap-shelf between sink and mirror were almost identical.  In others, there were differences like Verona being slower to act.

“What?” Aubrey asked, with a bit of a scoff.

“Nothing,” Lucy answered.

Emerson leaned in, whispering.

“Do you think she heard?”

The question occurred in both worlds, just different enough from one another for there to be a distortion to it.

“I heard,” the one Lucy said.  The other Lucy, standing by Verona and fussing over the ink stain, only glanced over, frowning.

The Lucy that had spoken took a step to the side, to ‘face’ the girls, though they were looking more in the mirror than they were looking at her.  In her own reflection, she was wearing the earring.  Something that hadn’t been the case when this event had unfolded.  The Lucy at Verona’s side was acting out what past Lucy had done.

“I’m not going to apologize,” Audrey said.

“What am I missing?” Verona asked.

“They were talking about me.”

“Barely,” Aubrey said.

“I want to ask,” Emerson said.  “What’s your deal?  Why-

“-why are you so pissed at everything all the time?” the other Emerson asked, impulsively, her voice a second off from the statement by the other.

Verona struck a pose, exaggerated.  “I’m really, really bummed that Dino-sty Dash Through Time got canceled.  Seeing it on Saturday mornings was the only thing keeping me going.  Now I want nothing except for the world to end.”

“It wasn’t that good,” Aubrey said.

“Shush,” Audrey said, elbowing her sister.  “We’re not talking to you, Verona.”

“Lucy,” Emerson said.  “I don’t want to be a jerk or anything, but-”

“You should do something different, then,” Lucy said, arms folded, eyes averted, frowning.  “You’re getting there.”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about!  That!  Why are you like this?  Who farted on your toaster tarts?  You’re pissed all the time.”

“I’m not that pissed.  This is just how my face is,” the two Lucys said.

“Nah, I’ve gone to school with you for too long,” the Emersons said.  “You’re different, these past few months.”

“Maybe,” the Lucy with the earring said, “I don’t exactly feel like opening up to some jerks who talk behind my back when they think I’m not listening.”

The Lucy without the earring dropped to her knees, paper towel in hand, and dabbed at the vague black stain on Verona’s jeans.  She shot the trio of girls at the other sink a sullen look, but didn’t respond.

“Whatever,” that trio said, while the overlapping trio that had been talking to the Lucy with the Earring whispered among themselves.

“Screw her.  Let’s just go.”

“Yeah,” the Lucy with the earring said. “Go.”

Audrey, Emerson and Aubrey headed to the door, leaving their little bit of graffiti unfinished.  Emerson held back, turning Lucy’s way before passing through the door.  “If you keep treating people like the enemy, sooner or later, they’re going to start acting like you expect.”

“Other way around,” the Lucy with the Earring said, to the closed door.  Her voice overlapped with the other, alternate Verona saying something about the ink stain. She focused on the Earring-reality, and let the true events of the past continue in the background.

“What?” Verona asked.

“Other way around, from what Emerson said.  I stopped pretending everything’s cool when it isn’t.  Someone’s acting like a jerk, I’m going to call them out on it.  I used to smile, I used to pretend stuff didn’t bother me, or that people weren’t being dumb or mean.  On purpose or by accident.  But it sure didn’t make anything better.”

“Hm?” Lucy asked, glaring up at Verona.

“Something to think about, I guess.  You do you.  So long as we’re friends.”

“Always.  Always always always,” Lucy said, kneeling on the bathroom floor by the sink, wet paper towel in hand.  She used wet paper towel to daub at the stain at Verona’s leg, seeing if she could absorb some ink, then shook her head.  No use.

Verona smiled, then looked down at her jeans, with the big wet spot on the side of her thigh.  “And I’m… going to be really annoyed my jeans have an ink stain on them.”

“I think you’re supposed to pat, instead of rub.  My mom said something like that about grass stains, before.”

“My mom works too much to really give me any advice, and my dad… I think all my dad knows about clothes is that he wears the same outfit to work every day.  And t-shirts with his faded old University logo on them during the weekends.  I hope they’re not mad about the jeans.”

Anxiety touched Verona’s features, as she contemplated her parents getting mad.

“Don’t worry about it,” Lucy said.  “Really.  It was an accident.  They can’t really blame you.”

“I’m never sure.  Ugh.  Ugh ugh ugh.  Maybe I can hide it, or sew a patch onto it.”

The door shut as the Earring-less Lucy and Verona made their exit.  Lucy turned to look at the door, then looked back to Verona.

“Just tell them, Ronnie.”

It was just the one Verona and Lucy in the washroom, now.  Delayed by a conversation, which was spurred by a whispered insult.  In the wake of it, they were reaffirming their friendship and keeping each other upright.  The two of them against a vaguely hostile, busy, uncaring world.

“This wet spot on my pants is annoying.  I’m going to go grab my gym shorts.”

“It’s cold for shorts.  Want my sweatpants?”

“Sure!  Yeah.  Let me just clean this up-”

“I will,” Lucy said, grabbing the sink as she straightened up.  She put her paper towel with the paper towels Verona had been using, all in the sink, and gathered them up.  “Go grab my pants from my bag.”

“Catch up with you in a minute then,” Verona said.  “Thanks.”

Then there was only Lucy, in seventh grade, wearing an earring she hadn’t owned then.  She gathered up the paper towels, then wiped at the sink to clean up the dribbles of faintly inky water, before they could stain anything.  She dumped it in the trash, then washed her hands.

Only when that was done did she face herself in the mirror, and the Earring personified stared back at her, holding up one finger.

The Earring touched one finger to her lips, indicating silence, then touched the ear with the earring.

“…should stop hanging out with her.”

“She’s getting a reputation as a bitch.  Nobody likes having her around.”

“I do.  She’s my best friend.”

“Maybe reconsider?  If she goes around calling us all jerks and stuff, people are going to start reacting to that.  It’ll hit you too.”

“Everyone on the dance team thought you had natural talent, before.  I think you’d kick ass if you joined.”

“And abandon Luce?  Nah.”

“Not abandon.  Just… hang with us too.  Do some dancing.”

“It’s a little bit tempting, but the more I get nagged about it, the less I like the idea.”

“Do you actually like how she’s acting?  You know she’s changed.”

“No, I- sure, she’s changed a bit.  Deep down, she’s the same Lucy.”

“Do you want to be the person who hears these things?” the Earring asked, through the mirror.

“Even knowing it makes things worse, little by little?  Verona pushed slightly away?  To flirt with joining the dance team?  To find some escape with them and some stolen vodka after the divorce, instead of solely with you?  To leave the door open for her to escape into a mind-numbing haze, even before Miss ever finds you and gives you three magic?”

The voice was behind her now.  Cool metal settled on her shoulders.  A hand and a forearm.  The hand attached to that forearm touched her ear.

“There’s no wrong answer, really.  But we must reconcile this gap between you and me.  Any answer you give helps us negotiate our way closer.”

“Are all implement rituals this harsh?”

“No.  I don’t know anything you don’t, except what threads through my manufacture, my design, my aesthetic.  But the same tempering rituals that scoured me clean of small evils and pollution also erased some of the softer edges.”

It felt like Verona should walk though that door, ready to change into Lucy’s pants.  Or the alternate Verona, from the real sequence of events, where Lucy hadn’t heard those words as she’d walked into the girls washroom at school, hadn’t retorted in the same way, hadn’t made Emerson just a little irritated, so she’d talk to Verona…

“Besides…” the Earring whispered, her head moving beside Lucy’s so a cool metal ear could press against Lucy’s own ear.  It should have squished the earring between their heads in an uncomfortable way, but it didn’t.  “…Would you have me be anything but harsh?  Uncompromising?  Willing to challenge?”

“If it leads to something better,” Lucy said.

“Your answer decides if it’s better.  Would you want this to be your Self, from the beginning until now?”

“Yes,” Lucy said.  “Because hearing… paying more attention, being more responsive, I can steer her away.  I need to catch stuff.”

“Do you know what scares me most?  It’s the idea that this will be it for the next however many years we’re alive and together.  Me, being the level-headed one.”

Lucy nodded, recognizing the whisper.

“But if you actually ask me to tell you what to do to make it up to me, and make that my burden or job, on top of everything…”

“I get it,” Lucy said.  “I do.  I know.  I’m taking on more.  It’s more burden, more stress, more… focus, I guess, that I’m spending on doing that.  On paying attention.”

“So long as you know,” the Earring said, embracing her from behind, arms crossed over Lucy’s chest, fingers digging into her arms.

“Yes,” Lucy said, voice firm, eyes fixed on the door with Verona on the other side.

Lucy hesitated, searching herself for the answer.

The Earring whispered, “We have only the three days, and so much ground to cover.  Tell me, will this earring tarnish?  Or will it do the opposite, and shed any defect to glitter bright?  Does it have sharp edges?”

“I don’t- isn’t that already decided?”

“Physically, yes.  Symbolically?  Decide down there.”

She let go of Lucy, and Lucy dropped, no ground beneath her feet.

Her bare feet struck the floor with a hollow echoing sound.

“There.  There!  I hear her.”

“Get ready.  Go.  Fan out.”

Her head turned to the room nearby.  She heard the faint footsteps.

It was like a vacant office building, some of the panels of the drop ceiling missing or fallen, wires dangling.  Paint chipped.  There were vents in the walls that were leaking a faint haze, which clung close to the floor.  The open space she was in now had a few scattered pieces of broken furniture, pillars, and windows at one side that were papered over from the outside.  The light from the windows was blue-tinted and dim, failing to reach into the full depth of the room.  What would have been a huge collection of cubicles, now mostly cleared out.

“Deal,” the Earring whispered in her ear.

The physical manifestation of the earring was gone.  There was only what was at her ear.

She reached for her stuff, and her hand slapped skin and a thin layer of clothing.  She was wearing only a sports bra and her skintight gym shorts, both stained with odd fluids, like the watery ink from the efforts of cleaning Verona’s pants.  Her skin was dotted with scabs and healing wounds, splatters of blood that had dried against skin, and some more of those other dark fluids.  Her lips were chapped, her eyes dry, her skin cold, and her hair loose and unbound by any cord.  Her feet were bare, and she could feel the grit, like salt or sand, all across the cool floor.

She ducked low, hurrying over to a pile of tables, most of them missing three legs.  Quietly, without a sound, she moved around them without touching them, moving her head around to peer under and beneath, looking for anything she could use.

Nothing.  No missing chair legs, not even a pen.

It’s like the Hungry Choir ritual.  No spoon, fork or knife.

She listened, because it had to be important, and she heard the footsteps.  She moved around the pile of tables to keep them between herself and the source of the sound.

Multiple sets of footsteps.

Stepping out of the gloom was a man, wearing a business suit, no tie, gore covering the white dress shirt and giving texture to the black suit itself.  His face had the blades of three kitchen knives embedded in it, each running in parallel, points near the chin, handles near the forehead.  The bloody ruin of his face was impossible to make anything out of.  A knife blade ran vertically through each eye, and the middle one bisected nose and lips.

He held a fourth kitchen knife.  Throwing it, catching it by the handle.  Throwing it, catching it by the handle.  She could hear it slap against his palm.  She heard his footsteps, and the sound as he kicked a bit of ceiling tile to one side.

As he reached the point where he was fully in the light, he stopped, head turning so that blind eyes could rove over the space.  A second one, a woman, emerged behind him.  Business suit, same deal, but the three blades that were sticking down her face were long enough to penetrate her collarbone, making her head rigid and unable to turn.  All the wounds were still bleeding, blood continually soaking out through her pale blue top.  Lucy wasn’t sure if that was a forever thing; if an hour from now, there would still be white portions of the top for blood to seep out into.

The woman was holding another blade like that.  A machete.

She looked for escape routes.

Doors in each corner of the room.  One led to a stairwell.

Stairwells were narrow, but once she was in there, she had branching options.  She figured if she could get a headstart, she could get in there, and even if they chased, they’d have a hard time knowing which floor she’d escaped to.  It opened the most options.

She heard heavy footsteps, and hesitated.

A man, tall and as muscular as a bodybuilder, emerged from the dark.  His skin had more scars from cuts than it had untouched flesh, thick body hair bristled out from chest and arms, and his head had three axes and two knives embedded in it.  The handles stuck straight up and formed a kind of crown.

She knew, right away, that he was the one in charge.  He fit the theme- he had a tie loosened and hanging from his neck, looking more like a claimed trophy than a thing he’d normally wear, black business pants, and shiny brown leather shoes caked in gore.  He carried an axe in one hand, a knife in the other.

He thrust the axe out with enough force that it whooshed in the air.  Gesturing.  Lucy pulled back further behind cover.  He repeated the motion.  Indicating two different corners.

“Search for her,” the muscular leader ordered, voice rough, choked, but not especially weak for how it was choked.  “Tell the others she was here.”

He started walking directly toward her.  The other two took the other corners he’d pointed to.

Leaving her no good option except for running to the stairwell.  She’d have one right behind her, bigger and stronger than she was, another two flanking.  Any direction that wasn’t away would have two of them collapsing on her.  Staying still would mean the big guy would pass within a few paces of her, as he walked around the table.  If she tried to creep around, keeping the tables between them, she’d be in plain sight of the others.

She didn’t move, and waited instead, listening to footsteps to keep tabs on where they were.

“Little girllll!” the first one she’d seen called out.  His voice echoed through the desolate space.

Lucy bent down, looking at the ramshackle pile of broken tables, and saw light on the other side.

She crouched down, and then crept into a gap between tables.

This could go so wrong so easily.  One nudge on the wrong table and it might fall.  It could trap her, alert them, or, most likely, both.

She shimmied forward on her belly, bare stomach rubbing against the accumulated grit on the ground.  A screw here, a bit of wood there.  Both things too small to use as practical weapons.

She had to rotate her upper body to slip through one gap, then inch forward, lifting up ribs, then pelvis, moving with glacial slowness, deeper into the mess of tables.

Lucy was forced to stop, almost dizzy, her body telling her to breathe hard, to panic, to react, while her mind wanted only control and silence.  Fear was like a furnace blazing inside of her, a hot flame that ate at her energy, her focus, and her coordination.  She had to keep feeding it, but everything she had available to feed it was vital.

Even hope.  The idea that she had a plan was something she could feed into that fire, but the act of feeding it made her greedy and anxious, too eager to move forward and do something reckless.

An edge of table, a safe table that sat with its top flat against the ground, scraped at her side, as she slid by.

What happens if I fail?  Do I doom myself to have this pain and ugliness infecting my implement forever?  Is it weaker?  What does it say about me, if this Earring can conjure up some darkness out of my subconscious that my conscious mind can’t defeat?

She crawled forward, turning her hips to avoid another dangling table-leg, until her head was at the far side.  It was a narrow gap.  Once she was partway out, she had to carry on, because backing up wouldn’t be an option.

Some footsteps paced.  One of the Others had already entered one room and returned from it.  She kept her eyes closed, trying to visualize the space.  There were pillars… where?

She put everything into listening, eyes closed… the tap of shoes against floor, traveling left, then right.  Left, then right.

A little bit further away and quieter, as it traveled right.

Like smoke, Lucy thought.  Like becoming moonlight and darkness.

She stuck her head out, then drew her shoulders together to get them past the gap.  Her chest and belly scraped the floor as she got them through-

Something crashed.  She dropped her head flat to the floor, to give less of a profile, and looked through the gloom.

The pacing one had pushed over a cubicle partition wall without anything to anchor it.

“Problem!?” the large one called out, from the stairwell.

The pacing man moved left.  Lucy counted two steps, then planted her hands on the floor, pushing herself out from under the tables.

Going through, instead of around.  She watched as the pacing one’s shadow moved across the floor, and slipped forward, quietly as she could, to enter the room the three Others had come from.

Her hand went to her nose and mouth, covering them.

Three security guards and four office workers were piled up in one corner of the room.  Butchered.  Seven bodies, all piled up against the door she needed to go through.

No other exits.  No other ways out that didn’t necessitate that she go past one of the Others.

She went to the doorway and peered out, through the darkness.

There were four, now.  The newest one looked like some intern kid or something, with a short sleeved shirt, small letter openers radiating out from his head.  He carried a disproportionately large blade that looked like it was meant to cut through entire stacks of newspaper or something.

Verona would have an easier time with this.  What would Verona do?

She touched her earring.  Made with a bit of Verona in it.

Footsteps were moving her way.  She couldn’t say if they were coming straight to her or just wandering.

Lucy crossed the room, pulling on the door handle, as if the bodies could be pushed out of the way.  It moved an inch before stopping.

Lucy looked around the door, at the wall, wondering if there was a way through.  Not without making noise.  She would barely dent the wall before they caught her.

Hauling on the door to create as much gap as she could, she made a face, then moved one of the corpse’s arms.  It wasn’t rigid, and she was able to place a hand in the gap of the door.

Stepping up onto the knob, she put fingers over the top edge of the door itself.  Bracing one foot against the wall beside her, the other reaching up, she grabbed the frame, and hauled herself up until she could squirm and achieve a position where she was perched on the very top edge of the door.

Drop ceiling.  She moved one of the foam tiles aside, then crawled in and through.

Something within the ceiling fell through.  She tensed, listening, and heard a thump.

She twisted around, moving as gently as she could, using the firmest ‘ground’ where there were walls beneath her.  Anything else risked that she’d fall through.

There was a scrape.  She turned, and she saw a hand reaching up.

Her breath a hiss through congested nostrils, her eyes stinging from the dust up here, she tensed.

The head peered over the top.  The man with the kitchen knives.

Her hand gripped a knife by the handle, and she twisted, hauling on it.  It made his head turn, and she lodged one handle against the edge of the ceiling.

She pulled her earring off, and gripped the bottom end and wire in one hand.  She raked the metal reinforced jewel at the bottom end across his fingers, to weaken his grip.

He pulled back, grabbing onto something-maybe the same door she’d used to climb.  The force of his tug dragged her about three inches closer to the open tile where she’d climbed through, but it also loosened the knife.

She pulled it free.  He made a gasping, sucking sound, fresh blood welling from the wound.

Tense, she remained poised.

He stabbed awkwardly with the kitchen knife.  She plunged the knife she’d pulled out of his head into his neck.

She almost lost her grip on her weapon as he dropped.

The big guy was hacking at the wall, making a hole he could go through.  The others were moving, communicating.  She could listen, but she had a pretty good sense of what they were doing.

She crawled away, through the ceiling, in the direction of the staircase.

The jewel in her hand caught faint light, flaring, and she was blinded.

Her heart sank.  She blinked hard, eyes wet.

“You okay?” Avery asked.  Voice a bit low.

Lucy had to blink a few times before she could see.

There were a lot of people here.  Her mom sat on the edge of the bed.  Then there were a bunch of twenty-something people around, some edging on thirty.  Everything was bright and dazzling and she couldn’t wrap her head around it.

“Don’t ruin the makeup,” Avery whispered.  “But you know more about that junk than I do.”

Lucy’s eyes locked onto Avery, reconciling the voice with the source.  Avery was there, wearing a suit, top buttons undone, hair in a swoosh not all that different than what she’d worn at the party.  She had a bit of tattoo peering out of her sleeve and at her collarbone.  Her voice wasn’t lower because of any artificial way of speaking, but because Avery was an adult.

Lucy’s hand went up toward her face, then stopped short, before she could ruin her makeup.

“It looks so good,” her mom said.

“Um,” Lucy said, her voice hollow and breathless.  She ran her hand down her stomach.  She was wearing a silk shift that extended to the knees, while everyone else was dressed to the nines.  They were all ready, and Lucy wasn’t, and they weren’t freaking out, which meant…

She touched her left hand, fingers running along the stones on the ring there.  She wore the weapon ring, too, on her index finger.

She touched her earring as well.  Reminding herself it was there.

“Need some space?” Avery asked, a bit more serious than before.

“This is a lot,” Lucy said, still a bit breathless.  What the hell was this?  She couldn’t imagine many ways to raise the stakes than a major, life-defining event.  Except what she was doing was a major event unto itself.

She looked at her mom and remembered Paul.

There were so many ways this could go wrong.

“It’s supposed to be a lot,” a girl said.  Alyssa.  Booker’s girlfriend.  “A lot is good.”

“Give us some space?” Avery asked.  “I’ve got some stuff to talk to Luce about.  Then we should get some things moving.  But I want to make sure we’re square.”

“Normally Lucy’s the one dictating schedules,” Alyssa said, with good humor but she rose to her feet.  She gave mom a helping hand.

Lucy’s mom touched her cheek.  “You look perfect.”

Lucy smiled, even as the tension of the moment built.  How was this at the same level as the knife-heads?  Or was it a reprieve?  Or a trap?

How was she supposed to ‘deal’ with this?  It was a test, probably, but…

The room cleared out.  Only Avery and Lucy within.

“Did you See something?” Avery asked, quiet.

“Nothing practice related, then?”

“I don’t know,” Lucy said, quiet.  “And I know this is supposed to be about believing and knowing and about love and figuring that out, but…”

She looked around the room.  At the hanging bag that presumably had her wedding dress in it.  There was a makeup kit, like the one she’d taken to the Blue Heron Institute, but more elaborate.  Maybe enchanted.

“…I don’t know.  Maybe that’s what I’m supposed to deal with.”

“This sounds like the sort of riddle Verona would be best suited to tackle,” Avery said.

Lucy back at Avery.  “Where is she?  Is she okay?”

“Verona’s… Verona.”

“That’s not really an answer,” Lucy said.

“It is, though.  And I’d hate to get into it when things aren’t going to change no matter what I say or do today.  Can we just make today a good day?”

Lucy shut her eyes.  Hurt welled in her chest.

Was the challenge to ask that question?  To face that reality?  Or did facing it help make it happen, or… or…

“Or is that already ruined?” Avery ventured.

“I don’t know,” Lucy said, again, voice hollow.

“I’m so sorry I’ve been so hard to reach.  Doing my own thing.”

“Are you happy?” Lucy asked, looking up.

“Yeah,” Avery told her.  Avery smiled, her features softening.  “Yeah.”

“You look fantastic.”

“A bit of glamour from new sources.  A bit of good, healthy living.”

Lucy hugged Avery on impulse.

“You good?” Avery asked.

A knock on the door made Lucy jump.  She was surprised Avery didn’t.

“I’m told you’re in there, Luce?” a male voice asked, on the far side.

“You’re not supposed to see each other before the wedding,” Avery said.

“We’re not that traditional.  Can I come in?”

“Some patterns and traditions are useful,” Avery said, with a warning tone.  “Shall I let him in?”

Lucy had a sinking feeling in her gut.  She nodded.

Avery steered Lucy to face away from the door.  “Stay.  Stick to the tradition.”

Lucy stayed, back to the door.  She could hear the door.  She could hear the footsteps.

“Back, easy does it, back, back…” Avery said.

He bumped into Lucy.  She reached back to pat at him and get a sense of where he was and what he was doing, and he took her hand, holding it..

They stood, back to back.

“I’ll give you a moment.  Don’t take too long.  We need to get you dressed,” Avery said.

“Ooh,” the fiancé said.  “So tempting to turn around.”

Lucy gave him a swat with her free hand.  He laughed.

It was a good sound.  Easy.

Lucy leaned her head back until it rested against his neck.  She turned her head a bit, saw the vest and shirt, and she smelled the cologne.  She closed her eyes, taking it in.  Feeling the warmth of him against her back.  His hand in hers.  So big.

She was prepared for the trap. The nightmare reveal he was… frick, who would be the worst possible person?  Chase Belanger?  Nicolette’s transphobic, lazy master?

Gabe?  Not that there was necessarily anything wrong with adult Gabe, freed from the Choir, but… what would it say if she had to face the fact that she’d rated a zero on the ranker app and he’d done the same?  That she didn’t deserve better?  That they were supposed to grow?

Except there was another chat.  Another hard, impossible, crazy thing that had to be tackled, and that made a far greater trap that would sit far heavier with her.  She believed even the likes of Chase could evolve and grow as a human.  She’d kick his ass if he didn’t.

“I wanted to check in,” he said.  “All these people around, and I only want you.”

“Thank you for indulging me,” she said.

“It’s my pleasure to indulge you,” he said.

She shivered at that, full-body, drinking in the scent.  “Enough time for that later, I guess.”

But he was already laughing.

Her hand escaped his.  She ran it up his forearm, feeling his arm in her hand.

He spoke again, voice low, making her shiver again.  “Keep that up, and I’ll barricade the door, we’ll delay everything.  And everyone will know why.”

She stopped, hand at the crook of his elbow.

He had such a Booker vibe, but different.  Gentle, bigger, and he felt like someone who she could lean on.  Literally, even.  She gave it a try.

Reaching backward, with one finger, he ran the back of one finger from her wrist to her shoulder.

“You’re chilly.  Is the room that cold?”

“I’m partially dressed, and I’m nervous.  We need to… we have to have a conversation.”

His hand stopped, body turned sideways, head turned away, back of his hand between her shoulder and neck.  “Uh oh.”

“Wasn’t that long ago that I was fighting off a bunch of corporate monsters with knives through their faces.”

“I’m going to need about five hours of elaboration on that, and our wedding guests wouldn’t wait that long.”

“It doesn’t matter that much.  Thing is, I didn’t really have anything except my earring and my wits.  I got dropped into it, and I got dropped into this.  Again, earring and my wits, and a situation I don’t feel prepared for.”

“I don’t feel totally prepared either, Luce.  But since you brought it up… the earring,” he said.  He reached up, finger tapping the hanging crystal so it swung.  “I was wondering if you’d wear it.  That’s kind of why I came.”

“Really?  An earring-related anxiety?  Are you going to ask me not to wear it?”

“Good lead-in to the heavier stuff, I guess,” she told him.

How do I tell you about the practice?  How do I bring you safely into this world?

There were two Lucys in the room, but they inhabited one body.  One was midway through the Implementum ritual, the other was preparing for her wedding.  Neither knew exactly what to say.

The choices she was making were deciding things, changing the earring’s identity, and her relationship to the earring.

Say nothing, put the earring away, and it would maybe become something that she could put away.  A division in her life between practice and the mundane.

Speak, say the hard thing, and weave it in… but at what cost?

She wished Avery was still around.  But Avery was hard to reach.

She wished Verona was still around.  But Verona was… Verona.

This was her future.  A potential future, believable.

“I’m wearing the earring,” Lucy breathed the words.

“Do you remember us discussing the practice, Kennet, and how we’d approach it all, practice, a while back?”

She let the question hang.  Her heart hammered.  My future is mine to decide.  I’m deciding.  I would, I will tell my partner, well before a wedding day.

“It’s important that I wear the earring.  That’s why I had Verona help design my dress to match it.”

The statement felt like another leap of faith.  A challenge posed to this test.  A challenge posed to her dynamic with Verona.  A pledge to her future, that she’d keep some connection with Verona, whatever happened.

“I look forward to seeing it, then.”

“I’ve got my eyes closed,” he said.  “Excuse me.”

His hand reached around to her face, covering her eyes.

A moment later, he kissed her.  Very different from the Wallace kiss.  It was familiar, and she matched it like it was familiar.

“I think we’re doing pretty well for a political marriage, tying our families together,” he said.  “I love you more than I thought was possible.”

Her mouth opened, then closed.

Why this?  A clue that by being the kind of person who would bear her implement into her marriage, she’d be the kind of person who’d marry into a practitioner family?

Or was it another test?  The earring pushing her, testing her limits, as far as her willingness or ability to decide her future?

Was it a negotiation with fate?  Do this, and you can have that?

“Yeah,” she said, her voice soft.  She smiled.  “I’m painfully fond of you too, you know.”

He kissed the back of her neck.  “I’ll let you get ready.  I’m looking forward to seeing you again, and the decades to come.”

The door closed, then opened again.

“Yes.  Should we get you ready?”

What followed was a somewhat rushed flurry of activity.  Getting the dress on, touch-ups with wire in the hair that had to wait until the dress was on.

“Did Verona make it?” Lucy asked.

“She’s here, yeah,” Avery said.  “She’s keeping back.”

There was no more room to ask.  The flurry of activity continued, with people leading her down the hall, downstairs.

This was weird.  This was intense.  The step forward.  The decision.

Booker stepped up next to her, taking her arm.  Giving her away.

“Mom’s sobbing,” Booker whispered.

Because Paul.  Because that was a pattern that hadn’t been broken.

The light was perfect, if glaring, and it caught on her earring, reflecting against the open door beside her.  She wore it, and she shone.  Every set of eyes on her.

She had only a glimpse.  Of Avery and her plus one, and Snowdrop.  Of Nicolette, of Zed.  She looked for Verona before she looked to her husband, and that eyeblink of a glimpse was followed by a deep darkness that swallowed her.

“Deal,” the Earring said.

“Every single time I see them, every time I hang out with my friends, you’re on my case about this thing…”

“No.  I can think back to two times you’ve come from seeing them and said something without thinking or doing some research.  But that was it.  I’m content to let you have your friendships and family and I stay clear of them.  You’ve said you were okay with that.”

“But when you do see them, you always point out things.  You make me out to be this terrible guy for not noticing little things, and I don’t think I’m that awful.”

“You’re not awful.  You’re not.  You’re so good to Booker.  Lucy adores you.  You’re kind and patient, and you’re so thoughtful.  I can be with you and I can feel like the kids are better off and living richer lives for seeing us together.  And that’s rare.  But when it comes to this-“

“That’s not how it works.  Because if I’m really failing on this thing like you’re saying, then I am awful.  And that’s not fair.”

“Would you please let me finish a sentence?”

“I will, but only if you do something for me.  Give me a concrete solution.  Tell me what you want me to do.  I’m happy to do it.”

Lucy lay in her bed, unable to hear the argument, and pulled her pillow around her head to cover her other ear.

Lucy lay in her bed, listening, and sat up, anxious.  She reached up to touch the earring.

“It’s not one thing, Paul.  It’s not.  You keep saying that and you’re not listening-“

“Because you’re not giving me a solution.  Believe me, I’ve thought about it for hundreds of hours, and it’s not like I can send them to sensitivity classes.  They wouldn’t go and they wouldn’t respect the lessons if I did.”

“It’s not about them, Paul.”

“It is, though.  They’re racist.  And I can try to call them on it, but I associate with them, and that makes me racist too, in your eyes?”

“It’s not- can we just drop the idea of racism from this discussion?  Because yes, it’s a thing.  But it’s always a thing.  It’s hard to escape.  My issues with your family and friends are broader than that.  What I want to talk about is you and me, not them.”

“Give me a solution.  Do you want me to stop talking to them?”

“I want you to stand up for me.  I want you to pay enough attention to realize that Booker and Lucy are being excluded from the group of your nephews and nieces, and then Booker gets bored and starts acting out, and Lucy copies Booker, and the things that happen after just reinforce the problems.”

“Going back to that.”

“It’s more than that, Paul!  It’s not the one thing!”

“Says the person who harps on the one thing every time she sees me with my friends and family!”

Lucy, lying in bed, unable to hear, remained where she was, groaning with annoyance that she was being kept up.

Lucy, sitting up, extricated her feet from the covers, then slipped from bed to ground.  She pulled off her cap and placed it on the bed as she walked to the door.  Pausing there, she looked into the full-length mirror by the door.

There were now three Lucys in the room.  The third was in her reflection, with metallic, smokey skin, and hair like wire, wearing an exaggerated version of the earring.  The other her, like her and her alter ego that was still trying to sleep in the bed, was wearing jammies with pastel dots.

“What happens if I go?” Lucy asked her Earring.

The Earring didn’t respond.

“It’s about respect, Paul.  No girl dreams of being second priority to her mother in law.  Can we- let’s drop this for now?  The kids should be asleep, I don’t want to wake them.”

“Can we let it drop?  Is that even a possibility?  Because I’m stuck here.  I don’t know what I’m supposed to say or do, you won’t tell me.  Do you want me to cut off my family?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe.  But I do want to drop this.  For those two.”

“And then you resent me for days.”

“I don’t resent you.  I resent that you’re not listening, but if we come back to it with cooler heads-“

She traversed the hall, quiet, until she reached Booker’s room.  She eased the door open.

“Mmph.  Hey Loopdeloo,” a young Booker mumbled.  “Want in?”

He lifted up his covers, inviting her in.

She wavered in the doorway, whispering, “Can we talk?  Or can you come with me?”

“Nnnh.  I’ve got a test tomorrow and it’s hard enough to sleep with that going on.”

“Sorry,” she whispered.

“You sure you don’t want under?”

She shook her head, then eased the door closed.

Lucy ventured down the long, dark hallway, with the single nightlight to guide the way to the washroom, and the light by the stairs to ensure nobody sleep-stumbled over the top step.

“They keep telling me to watch out for this, and I really hate to say it, Jas, but they’re kind of right.”

“I would not treat your immediate family as a reliable source here, Paul.  Jesus.”

Up toward her mom’s room.

“Who else am I supposed to talk to?  You harp on this.  You make me out to be the bad guy…”

“This isn’t something where you’re good or bad.  It’s about paying attention and trying.  And you’re not doing great right now.”

Until she was close enough to make out the words through the closed door without needing to.

Mom’s voice was measured.  “Just listen when I tell you something matters more than you think it does.  Respect my opinion that much.  If you want to be a dad to those two like you say you do, then pay more attention to the kids in those situations, instead of getting caught up in things with your brothers or mom.”

“She needs help sometimes.”

“She has a robust family with several sons.  You’re not the only person who can give her that help.”

“I can’t help but feel like no matter what I do, or the concessions I make-”

“Is you listening to me and supporting the kids that much of a concession?”

“-you’ll say it’s not enough.  Or I’ll miss something and I’ll have to hold my breath after each and every visit, waiting for that gentle little verbal rebuke from you, pointing out how my family’s horribly racist-”

“That’s not what I do.  It’s not after every visit.  It’s not even after most visits.”

“-and alluding to how I’m racist by supporting them.”

“It’s not about that!  It’s a factor, but it’s not the entirety of it.  It’s- Paul, let me try to frame this in a different way.”

“I was talking to someone, and I can’t share specific details about patients, but she’s a nurse, and she had a patient who was pregnant.  Every time the patient went to the doctor with health issues, they’d give the same diagnosis.  It’s the pregnancy.  Stomach problems?  It’s the pregnancy.  Aches?  Pregnancy.  Rashes?  Pregnancy.  They were slow to deliver the actual diagnosis, the baby didn’t make it, and she passed away four months later.  It’s something that hits very close to home for me.  Because Booker and Lucy’s birth father had something very similar happen.  They missed the diagnosis.”

“As educated as they are, even doctors are human.”

“It’s not that.  It’s a failure to see.  It’s a failure to listen.  It happens with trans patients, and doctors will point to any hormones they’re taking as the explanation for anything.  It happens to the morbidly obese, and obesity will be blamed.  It’s not that hormones are bad, or that the obesity is that much of a complicating factor.  But some people are blinded by the label, or that one factor.  It’s happening here.”

“Here?”  Paul’s voice was defensive.

“You can’t diagnose every problem I put in front of you with the same thing.  I, Booker, and Lucy have so much more we struggle with than just the color of our skin.  You’re ignoring everything I say, stamping it with the same label, and then getting defensive over it.”

“Because I’m prejudiced?  I can’t see past my own bias?”

“Or because you’re attached to your mom and it’s a defense, I don’t know, but I want to talk this out without- without getting caught in this endless circle.”

“Oh believe me, the cycle’s getting to me too.  Can’t win, can’t escape it.  What happened with the pregnant lady.  Was that prejudice?  Was what happened with the trans person prejudice?  Misogyny?  Transphobia?”

“It… pretty much by definition.”

“And me doing this here, as you allege, is racist.”

“If you can’t have an honest conversation with me, and you hold onto that notion instead of listening to me… yes.”

“There it is.  Right there.  It was inevitable.”

“Can we stop?  Can we take thirty minutes, can-”

“We can stop.  I’ve been on the edge of being done with this for a while.”

“Then that’s it.  I stuck around for Booker and for Lucy but-”

“What are you talking about?”

“They were right, Jas.  They told me, over and over again, I can’t win, I won’t ever win this debate, or reach that point where I get the thumbs up, I’m clear.”

“Frankly, Paul, you’re being an ass about this.  Stop, take a break-”

“I’m done, Jas.  I’m spent.  Call me an ass, I don’t care.  I’m going to go to my mom’s.  She needs the help.  I’ll send G or Rod over to grab my stuff, if you’ll pack it up.”

“Don’t do this.  I invited you into our lives, at the very least you owe Booker more than that.  You owe Lucy.  Have a sit-down with them.  Explain-”

“How do I explain this?  How?  No.  Tell them whatever you want.  Make me out to be the bad guy, it’s fine.”

“It’ll break their hearts.”

“And it breaks mine.  I’m pissed.  I hate this.  I thought we were building something but it’s impossible to get past this.  I don’t know what I’m even supposed to do.”

“Stop listening to them.  To your brothers who you know are shitty, and to your mom, with her ulterior motives.”

“She loves me unconditionally.”

“That’s what this should have been.  Us.”

“Paul, don’t go.  Don’t do this to them.  Don’t do it to me.  We deserve better, and if you’d just listen-”

Paul, a backpack over one shoulder, stepped out into the hallway.  He froze as he saw Lucy.

She glared at him.  Aware he was going.  Aware her mom was hurting, from the sounds of her voice in the other room.

“Be good to your mom,” he murmured.  He put a hand on the side of her face, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

She reached up, taking his hand, and gripped it, squeezing her ear and his hand both, with the metal and decorated studs between them.  He jerked, and she held on, digging into her own ear with her fingernails for traction, squeezing.

He finally pulled away, his hand bleeding.  He turned and fled downstairs.

Her own blood dripped from her ear to her earring, collecting, she imagined, on the dangling crystal, before dropping down to stain her jammies.

She looked into the room and saw her mom, crying, fighting the tears.  Like she was drowning, and when she came up for air, it was a moment of dry eyes.  Of looking hurt beyond words.  No doubt having to imagine explaining to the two of them.

It hurt, seeing the process.  But she made herself look.

A life in the process of being built, dashed to pieces, because of stupidity.

The door closed downstairs.

Moments later, the other Lucy emerged from the bedroom, wearing her hair cap, no earring, no blood.

She walked up until she intersected the Lucy with the earring.

Together, they got a replay of that scene from years ago.

You couldn’t have won that argument, mom, because he wanted to lose it.  He got scared and he bailed.  He’s a coward at heart.

Her mom straightened, realized Lucy was there, and hurriedly wiped her eyes dry.  She rose to her feet.  “What are you doing up?”

Eyes burned across the campfire.  A circle of Others, stand-ins for the Kennet Others, ringed the fire.  Amadeus and Emerson flanked Lucy.  Stand-ins for her friends.

Suspicion, paranoia, and imminent accusations brewed.

Firelight caught in the dangling jewel and danced around Lucy.

“You’re taking on more.  You’re facing harsher truths, which costs you, when you claimed to your friends that you were so worried about the burdens being placed on you.  Taking your own burdens after complaining of burdens.  You take the harder roads, you focus, you don’t retreat.”

The Earring laid a cool metal hand across Lucy’s cheek.  “Why?”

The second time Lucy had been asked.

“Because someone can tell you all the answers and it doesn’t matter at all if you don’t listen.  That’s how you figure the stuff out.  You said my issue was I knew a lot of things but didn’t believe them.  And I believed in things but thought I couldn’t know them.  It’s stuff like Booker validating me, and Verona backing me up, and Avery cheering for me, that bridge those gaps.  I need to listen to the cries for help, like Verona’s, in that parking lot in Kennet.  The little clues from Avery, that she’s probably not going to stay in Kennet in the long term.  She’s meant to be out there in the world.  New places.  Why?  Because yes, it’s hard, but it’s essential.”

The hand at her cheek slid beneath skin, caressing bone.  It traced down Lucy’s throat, fingernails grazing spine, past collarbone, to sternum.

The question was implicit.

“Mom, Booker, Verona, and Avery love me.  I can be loved.  I want to be a person that’s easier to love.”

The Earring, hand within Lucy’s flesh, like it was reaching into a puddle, reached past bone without resistance.  Lucy caught its wrist.

The Earring met her eyes.

“And scary to be against,” Lucy whispered.

The earring reached past her, into and through her heart, then moved the hand sideways, through flesh and bone, through blood and everything else.  Past shoulder, along arm, until fingers met fingers. Like a hand into a glove, but the glove was already occupied.

Arm and body and head followed, and arm and body and head followed suit in finding their place.

Lucy was heavy, metal, with red jewel studs that caught the light and cast red, smokey patterns on the ground and walls around her.  A little tarnished, a little scuffed up, but that was wholly okay.

The ritual lines glowed in darkness, and then the darkness slipped away.

She knelt on the floor, where every aspect of the diagram had knit together into a circle.  She watched as it flowed into her knees and feet.  Into her.

She took in a breath for the first time in two days.

“Done,” she said.  She straightened, moving her head around to feel the simultaneous weight and lack thereof on her ear.  Reaching into and through it felt like using her Sight, but another appendage.  Subtler and more obvious to the outside observer at the same time.

“Any problems?” Verona asked.

“Some, but… they’re riddles and patterns I want to go back to later.  For now… how bad is it?”

“The siege?” Verona asked.

“Yeah.  Or whatever’s going on in The Blue Heron Institute.”

“We’ve been cooped up in here with you, hiding out so we can’t get accused of interfering,” Avery said.  “But last we heard, it was really bad.”

“Hit me with it,” Lucy said.

“Nicolette had some group she was going to join.  Bristow found them, made deals.  She’s obligated to help Alexander for contracted appointments, but she’s otherwise defected to Bristow.  Tanner, Seth, and Chase defected too.”

“He took most of the Belangers?”

“It was one thing of like, five, with a bunch of other things rumored.”

“It felt like we couldn’t take three steps without hearing students talking about what was going on,” Avery said.

“And Alexander?  He made moves?” Lucy asked.

“He did, but it sure sounded like Bristow took the B.H.I. in one fell swoop,” Verona said, her expression darkening.  “And I’m not sure what that means for us and our ability to keep being students.”