Always You Part 7
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Just catching up? Read the previous installment here.
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4.
It was a silent couple of minutes across the graveyard Miranda Cove highway, partly because I had far too many things dancing in my head to make lame conversation, and partly because the Jack was laughing at me. No, he wasn’t exactly laughing per se, but the smirk that coincidentally appeared as I started to take charge looked as though it had been cemented across his smug face. For once, though, what the Jack and his surrealist painting of a sister thought of me was far from the front of my mind.
Picking Carina up was one thing. The easy part: pulling up to the sidewalk, waiting for her to get in with her netbook or whatever gadget she was using these days to stay perpetually (and creepily) connected, and pulling off to convene in Lucia’s or, for the sake of my dwindling gasoline funds, something closer.
The part where the Tides were gunning for her was another predicament altogether.
Supposing for a moment that this Evangeline chick (calling her ‘blue-eyed goddess’ would get tedious really fast) was right and that the world was, in fact, coming to an end in forty-eight hours, then it wasn’t any more ridiculous to assume that an army of wasted youth—the Tides—shared my destination. Carina wouldn’t have time to pack up all of her things—the girl basically lived in a Tim Burton Apple Store—but knowing her, she’d try to before company arrived. We’d run out of time, and let’s just say we don’t want that.
But then, what to do with Luci, Carina’s lovable and socially awkward landlady? You can’t leave a one-scene-wonder to get her face beaten in. It’s just criminal.
I pulled Jeanette onto the off-ramp at the last possible moment and decided to keep my mind on the road. Getting creamed by incoming traffic or worse wouldn’t be doing anyone a favor.
Well, maybe for Zack Forest … not that I’d gotten any answers about that.
I pulled up in the same spot from yesterday.
“Don’t do something ridiculous while I’m gone,” I said under my breath. Apparently my breath isn’t quiet enough for that to work.
“We wouldn’t dare,” Jack said while informing me of Paloma’s perpetually awkward presence.
Sure thing, I thought as I closed the door and walked up to Carina’s house. It wasn’t like the Jack would run off and rescue a sibling or something totally random. Fuck’s sake. He might as well have been a transvestite from Argentina, for all of the sense he made.
I guess I was still caught up in the whirlwind that the last two days had been to realize just how bonkers my situation was. Carina was high enough in spirits to point this out while she shoved the Macbook Air and its power supply into her sling bag. “You talk to a girl with big blue eyes and believe everything she says without question,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone, “Did you ever stop to think that maybe she was high as a kite?” If I had told her about the loads of pot at that place, I doubt she’d have believed me anyway.
“While we’re talking about stopping to think,” I sat on her bed as Carina continued, simultaneously powering down her workstation with soft, graceful movements that I found myself studying intently, “What happened when you were supposed to meet with the Jack earlier? You hang up the phone and don’t say a word. Do you enjoy making me worried sick?”
…And look at that. She cares after all.
As if she had some kind of mystical, super-duper mind-reading powers, she turned away from the computers and pursed her lips at me like I had stolen from her metaphorical cookie jar. An exasperated sigh changed the subject. “Why am I sending Luci clothes shopping again?”
“I told you already,” I loathed repeating the excuse I had come up with in the time it took me to blink, “There’s a buy-one-get-three-free sale on romance novels at Barnes and Noble.” Older-and-single-and-lonely-white-female Luci had dashed out of the house moments after I relayed the dubious news. By the time she managed to get across the freeway to the mall, park, get inside, and realize it was all a hoax, the Tides should have already come and gone. I’m not one for solving issues, but stalling them is my specialty.
We locked up the house and piled into Jeanette. Or, at least, I piled in. Carina stopped in her tracks with one glance at the utterly absent Paloma.
“Who is that?” Our lovely Operator asked in a not-so-lovely tone. I got in the driver’s side and opened her door for her. You know, as one of those gestures to prevent fighting. They worked on my parents well enough.
“This is Paloma,” the Jack spoke up with dramatic emphasis, “My sister.”
“The Tides had her hostage for some reason or another,” I said as she finally started to get inside, “So Jack told me to meet him at that bookstore, and we busted her out.” My foot went to the gas pedal and we started down the road. I recalled a half-decent pizza place on this side of town; we could get something there and act inconspicuous to any crew-related kids while talking about the current holes in the narrative.
It wasn’t much, but worked for me.
The inside of Ray’s Pizza—surely the original—attempted to maintain an faux-Italian décor with the pictures of deceased, nondescript families and candlelight. The four of us were led to a booth by the far wall, at a table with a detailed map of Sicily under the fiberglass. You know, in case any of us had the urge write a rude limerick or something. Personally, I’d save that for Canada.
You might be wondering what I have against Canada. I don’t have anything against the place. Most of my friends are Canadians.
…Seriously, though, they’re a cool bunch. They wouldn’t possibly get offended at me. That’s happened a few times, and when it does, you feel like a dick. Nobody likes feeling like a dick, especially when you know a guy named Dick who acts worse than his name suggests. So yeah, Canada. You’re a sport.
Where was I?
Oh, right.
It had been a dead silence in the minutes it took to get us from Carina’s cul-de-sac to Ray’s Pizza, and throughout all of it, making conversation had been akin to stepping on a land mine with your face.
It went like this: Carina had three colors. She was her usual light-brown, irresistibly pristine self when she was annoyed or just being herself (although more often than not those were the same thing); she turned red a few times in the years we’d worked together, usually during emotional moments, like a normal teenage girl. A normal teenage girl who spends her days behind the cancerous glow of computer monitors while her finger joints get worked to a fine powder, but that didn’t change anything as far as I saw. Finally, when she changed from normal into a deeper, almost mahogany shade, you could tell she was pissed. As if the furrowed brow, folded arms, and talking to herself didn’t give enough of a hint.
After waters came to the four of us and the waitress who had delivered them left without aplomb, I decided to take one for the team. “So yeah, Paloma’s kind of shy,” I offered. “She’s a cool kid once you get to know her.” I had no way of knowing that, of course, but it was a springboard for benevolent conversation.
It turned into this instead: “How dare you do something like this without consulting me!” She spat like a Disney villain to a waiting Jack. “What’s the point of getting details of anything if you’re going to storm into a…an enemy fortress and start things? Tell me. I’m curious. Seriously. Enlighten me.”
Jack leaned forward in his seat fondled the rim of his glass with his fingertips. Even when in the hot seat, the man had style. “You knew as well as I did the odds of finding her again,” he said, “I had a lead and I took it.”
“You almost got yourself killed, or worse,” she said in that half-whisper half-yell that girls do, “Then what would I do, huh? I thought we were partners, Jack. This wasn’t fair.
“Did he tell you, Henry?” She brought me into this as though I were a prop in verbal combat, “We had leads on Paloma. We spent months looking for her. Months! You know why? Because one slip-up could get Jack dead in a river. And now look what he does. It’s beyond insane. It’s…it’s just not fair.” Now she was repeating herself. Oh, boy.
“Life isn’t fair. My sister’s alive. We can get back to the task at hand.”
“’The task at hand? What ‘task’ is that, might I ask? Does that roughly translate to ‘doing whatever the fuzzy hell I feel like’? You could just say that. It’s a lot more fun to say.”
I had to admit, it was. Fuzzy hell? Huh. Point to Carina.
Before the Jack could open his mouth and set the back-and-forth going, possibly giving us even more attention that we didn’t need, I rose my hand. It was the one thing I remembered from third grade, and with good cause. Carina and Jack looked at me with hurried attention.
My hand sank back to my side as I spoke softly. “I can’t have both of you fighting like this,” I said. “Carina, Jack’s sorry.”
Yeah, right. Let me rephrase that.
“Okay, Jack’s not sorry, but everything worked out okay and he’s not going to do anything like that again. He promises. Right, Jack?”
The Jack grabbed a piece of bread from the basket on the table and nodded quickly, eager to get the topic off of his ass. I suddenly came under fire from the Carina Gaze of Doom, and fought to not choke at my words.
“And Carina, I need you tonight.” I didn’t stumble that part. Score One for Team Holding-Back Hormones. “We need to find Kenneth, and you know how to do that.”
She went for the bread: a sign that all was well, at least for the moment. “What’s finding Kenneth got to do with anything? Beyond the fact that he won’t talk to you, that is, or the fact that I don’t even know why you’re calling him to begin with.” She had the most elegant sentence structure. Hell, why wasn’t she narrating this
“That girl you sent us to, the Familiar,” I paced my words so that I didn’t let slip anything too outlandish, “She said we need to see the other Familiars in town to know what Zack Forest is up to. To find the Familiars, she said we would need Kenneth.”
Carina’s eyebrow shot up as she stuffed a buttered slice of bread in her mouth. “What, was she psychic or something?”
“Something like that.”
“She must not be a very good one.”
“That’s exactly what I said,” I admitted. “Still, we need to talk to him. He has to join us.”
The Jack drank his water, set the glass down with pre-choreographed flair that coincidentally had his hair flowing, and looked at the two of us. “Nonwithstanding that I have no idea who or what you’re talking about,” he didn’t sound too thrilled, “What is the importance of this Kenneth character? You don’t like him, he obviously doesn’t like you. Why not recruit somebody else to do his job?”
“He’s not exactly the important part,” I replied and braced for impact. “The Familiar said that if we’re going to get anywhere in whatever’s going on, I have to reform Animal House.”
It hung in the air like the scent of a dead animal in the walls, left to rot for a week without air conditioning or fans to alleviate the misery. Even Paloma reacted. Granted, she sipped from her glass of water and put it back in exactly the same position, but it counted. Carina’s knuckles twitched; the Jack’s hand went to his chin to recreate the pose of The Thinker.
The gorgeous genius beside me was the first to comment. “…You have to reform Animal House. Just you. That’s your plan?”
“Well, if you want to get caught up in the pronouns of it all…”
“Animal House,” Jack seemed to taste the words as he said them. “Not as in the inspiring filmed masterpiece, but as in your crew.”
“That’s right,” I said it with a matter-of-fact tone that I didn’t mean to use. “We’ve already got me and Carina, and that’s almost half the team right there. If we get Kenneth, then there’re four of us. That’s a crew.”
“I don’t know where to begin to tell you how ludicrous this plan is, Henry.” Carina never was one to go along with me. I saw this coming, but it didn’t make it any more pleasant. “What is any of this going to solve? That Familiar was a dead-end. She was talking nonsense.”
“What, is becoming a crew again that difficult?” I didn’t like the idea much either, but it didn’t sound too difficult.
“No, you know what I don’t like about it? It’s escalation. Zack Forest is afraid of you—”
“Afraid of me?”
“—He’s not afraid of Animal House, or you and whatever you call me and Jack. If you bring a full-blown crew into this, somebody might get hurt. Somebody else might get hurt.”
See, that’s the kind of logic I should be using. It makes you wonder, what would her reaction be if somebody told her that the world was ending?
Speaking of worlds ending—
“Get down!” The Jack choked out past layers of chewed bread. I didn’t know what he was talking about until the blue Humvee crashed through the front of Ray’s Pizza and rammed straight into the wall. Tables in its way fell apart like leaves, sending shards of chairs blasting into the sky like shrapnel. I couldn’t make out the screams of the patrons over the roar of the engine, or the sound of five big guys piling out as another car came up right behind it.
As if today couldn’t get any worse.
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Read the next installment here.
