A History of Glitter and Blood (15 page)

They flew away from each other. Scrap wiped her lipstick off his mouth.

He said, “Now you know what you're doing.”

And maybe it was the messed-up hair and smeared lipstick and the high heels she shoved back on as the elevator stopped, maybe it was her face, still a little dazed, or maybe it was just that Cricket wasn't there that day or that Tier had said something that either greatly pleased or gravely disappointed his father, but today Crate passed Scrap off to an attendant and gave Beckan a shrug. “Tier can have you,” he said.

The crowd parted and on the floor sat a boy, chubby and small, a heavy book in his lap, a smudge of dust down his nose. He looked up and said, “Me?” and he looked at Beckan, and he was young and so much more terrified than she was.

And maybe she fell just a little in love.

It's so hard to picture now.

There is nothing in the history books about love.

Except Beckan would say that there's all that is.

Sometimes I think that Beckan is full of shit. Are you reading this, Beckan? Sometimes I think you're full of shit, and sometimes I can't believe how shortsighted you are, and sometimes I want to take you and pin you up against that wall again but I can't because Cricket's dead and the world is for shit and this was never about me. This will never, ever be about me.

And now I have so much else to worry about. I don't think you could ever know what I would give to have you be my biggest problem, Becks.

Fuck, I can't believe Josha was right, I can't believe this is a story about you.

An hour before everyone
is scheduled to arrive, Beckan is a mess. She pushes the chairs in at the kitchen table, pulls them out to readjust the cushions, trips over Josha's shoe on the way to make the beds. “Do the fucking dishes!” she yells at Scrap, who is sitting uselessly at the kitchen table during all of this, head in his hands, reading Tier's history book.

“Shouldn't you be writing or something?” she says.

He looks up. “What?”

“All you've been doing lately is writing.”

“I'm not writing anything,” he says, absently, vaguely, turns a page.

“You're cutting and pasting. Making a scrapbook, Scrap? Should I take pictures? Come on. Do the dishes.”

“I'll do them later.”

“You don't even sleepwalk anymore.”

The first problem is Josha. Beckan has been preparing him for hours, but as soon as Tier and Rig walk in, he is snarling his way to a corner of the kitchen. Rig flinches and watches him.

“He's fine,” Beckan says. “Don't worry about him.”

Tier says something in Rig's ear. Beckan listens for Cricket's name, but instead hears her own. Rig loosens and nods, and on the way to the table, she grabs Beckan's hand for a second and squeezes, and Beckan is confused that this makes her feel comfortable and big.

The second problem is Piccolo, who arrives late, but he shows up before anyone gets too suspicious. “Sorry, I got so lost,” he says, with a smile like Beckan hasn't seen, on anyone, in months. He comes up behind her and gives her a hug that lifts her a few inches off the ground.

The third problem is Scrap, who watches this hug with one eyebrow arched, his arm wrapped around himself while he leans against the refrigerator.

“It's good to see you, Scrap,” Piccolo says. He offers his hand—his left, to match Scrap's—and Beckan is nervous for a split of a second that Scrap won't take it. But he does, immediately.

Tier and Scrap make eye contact across the room.

Maybe she notices, maybe she doesn't.

“How are you?” Tier says, very softly.

Scrap nods a little.

“He's doing great,” Beckan says, brightly, squirming out of Piccolo's arms. “He healed right up. Fever's gone and everything! He never gets sick. It was a fluke, yeah, Scrap?”

“Yeah.”

Yeah
, Piccolo mouths to her. She bites her lip.

“I like your house,” Rig says, and Beckan scurries off to give her a tour while Piccolo greets Josha like an old friend.

They all sit around the table, Beckan between Rig and Piccolo, Josha on Piccolo's right, where he can best fawn over the big silver buttons on his military coat. “A hand-me-down of my dad's,” Piccolo says. “Pretty much the only good thing he's given me.”

“Mine left me some buckle-shaped scars on my back and a dry sense of humor,” Josha says.

“Mine left most of that kid,” Tier says, pointing at Scrap, who rolls his eyes and sticks his tongue in his cheek and finally sits down, next to Tier.

Beckan runs off to get her father.

When she gets back, everyone is focused on Scrap's arm, or where his arm would be. Rig touches a space a few inches under his ripped shoulder, like she thinks the arm might be invisible. Scrap gives her a small smile.

“Can I see it?” Piccolo says, and Scrap offers the stump of his arm as best he can, and Piccolo gives it a quick look before he shakes his head. “Disgusting,” he says. “It's fucking sick.”

“Oh,” Rig says when he curses, not like she disapproves, not even like she's surprised, but like it is dawning on her that
this is what this is. This is how we are going to talk about this
.

Scrap pulls back.

Beckan isn't sure she's ever, ever seen him embarrassed before.

“No,” Piccolo says. “No, I didn't mean you. I'm sorry. I mean . . . what happened to you. This is the kind of shit that war does,” Piccolo says.

“Exactly,” Josha says. “Exactly.”

Scrap says, “Gnomes always ate fairies. The war didn't cause that.”

“The war was the reason Cricket was anywhere near Crate,” Piccolo says, as if Scrap needs this explained and he is the one to do it. No one mentions that Scrap and Cricket tricked for a year before the war started. That all it took was one dirty comment spat at Cricket while he was grocery shopping to make them realize it would be a pretty easy way to afford to eat like kings and sleep in late, which were the kinds of job perks they liked at that point.

“I really admire that you can be calm about it,” Piccolo says to Scrap. “It's really incredible. I don't know how I could move on if something like that happened to me.”

“We're fairies. We're used to having pieces missing.”

Piccolo says, “It must be such a hard thing, this immortality of yours. Especially now, seeing that it . . . that's not a guarantee that you're going to live forever. It just means you won't die from natural causes.”

“We always knew that,” Scrap says.

“We won't die at all,” Beckan says. “Just be lost.” She peeks at her father and wonders about the rest of him, stuck in a dead gnome's stomach.

“You know a lot about fairies,” Scrap says.

Piccolo is still smiling. “My mom used to tell me stories about a few fairies she met one time. I always thought you guys sounded amazing.”

“Josha likes you guys, too!” Beckan says. “That's why he wanted to be in your army.”

“What's the state of the gnome army, anyway?” Piccolo says, his tone changed, no longer light.

“Gnomes need leaders,” Rig says quietly. “It's just . . . how we are. We like to be led.”

“So now that the king's dead, they're not gonna be trying anything again?”

“I can't imagine so, no.”

Tier and Scrap are looking at each other again, like they know something the others don't, and Beckan does not like this.

What kind of secret could the two possibly share? (Fuck, Beckan, I'm so sorry.)

“But truly,” Piccolo says to Scrap. “That you're able to deal with losing that arm. It's incredible.”

“It's killing him,” Josha says. “He's just trying not to hurt Tier's feelings.”

Scrap says, “Josha, would you shut up?”

“Bite me.”

Tier looks up.

Josha growls.

“Tea,” Beckan says, jumping up. “I'm making tea. Do you guys like tea?”

Tier says, “Yeah, we do.”

“Piccolo?”

“I don't know what it is.”

“It's good. You'll love it.”

Beckan gets up to put the kettle on, and they're quiet for a minute at the table. Tier plays with Rig's fingers, and Josha keeps admiring Piccolo's jacket. Scrap sits perfectly still and somehow seems a hundred times calmer than the rest, and Beckan looks at him and thinks maybe it's because he just does not care.

You're always cold
.

“It was my dad,” Tier says, eventually. “Who ripped off Scrap's arm.”

Piccolo nods, slowly.

“Tier's a good guy,” Scrap says.

Beckan says, “He is,” and Josha gives the smallest grunt of agreement, and Tier smiles at Josha with everything in him.

“Oh, God, of course,” Piccolo says. The others look at each other in confusion, but Piccolo just scoots his chair farther into the table, leans more toward Tier. “Of course. Trust me, if I took after my father, I'd be ripping arms out too.”

Tier watches him. He isn't smiling anymore, but his eyes still are.

“It really can skip a generation,” Piccolo says. “Hopefully more.”

“What can skip?” Rig says.

“War,” he says. “Someone just has to make it happen.”

They all are quiet. They look at each other.

And together, they start making a flag.

“The gnomes think the tightropers are planning something,” Tier says, marker in one hand, teacup in the other.

“Tier,” Scrap says. He looks up from Tier's history book, which he's been devouring instead of drawing. “Don't.”

Tier takes a deep breath. “They don't know anything, really. But there's talking . . . there's always talking. Everyone's suspicious, no one's happy.”

Piccolo nods. “I figured. I have no way of knowing what the tightropers are up to. They hide everything when I'm anywhere close.”

“Why?” Rig says.

Scrap says quietly, to Tier, underneath everything, “We should talk later.”

“Okay,” Tier says. No one else notices.

Piccolo says to Rig, “Because . . . back at our last city, I had a . . . a someone. In my life. Who wasn't a tightroper.”

“A fairy?” Beckan says.

“No, I've never been to a fairy city before. A fire-breather. We're nomads, y'know, we travel around, dropping in over other cities. We're so charming.” He ruffles the hair on the back of his head. “Anyway, they broke us up, but . . . they weren't happy about that. Called me a blood traitor. These fucking bloodlines. That's how all of this crap gets started.”

Tier says, “But some of it's good. Racial strengths—we have the teeth and talons, the fairies live forever, that stuff isn't worthless.”

“It's not at all worthless. That's the problem. It's powerful. It's hideous scary shitty powerful. What's really important right now is that we're a united front. The group of us.”

“A pack,” Scrap says, softly.

Beckan lights up.

“Yeah,” Piccolo says. “Yeah, totally like that.”

“The thing is that I tend to screw up packs,” Scrap says.

They talk and draw late into the night, Scrap fraying at the edges. He starts out calmly distant from the crafts and plans, but after a few hours he is restless, even twitchy, jumping up every few minutes to check that the stove is off or that the window in his bedroom wasn't left open. “Scrap,” Beckan says. “Calm down?”

Eventually he opens up Tier's book and puts it on the table.

“Look at this,” he says. His voice is scratchy. “Someone else please look at this. It's killing me.”

“You were here first,” Scrap says. “We pushed
you
underground.
We're
ruling
you
.”

Beckan says, “No. No. They
eat
us. I'm sorry, Tier, but you eat us.”

“I know.” Tier puts his hand on Scrap's. “Hey. It's just one book. It's one truth. It's ancient history, anyway.”

“But
I don't know which one is right
. How the fuck am I supposed to write a book if I don't know what the real truth is?” He's even quieter now. “How am I supposed to . . . make any decisions? It's not even a matter of choosing what side to be on, it's . . . how do you even keep track of what the sides are when you can't even get the whole story?”

Scrap starts falling asleep at the table—maybe still worn out from being sick, Beckan thinks, because she can't figure out any other reason for him to be so out of sorts—and they send him off to bed, but the rest of them stay up, drinking cups of tea. They make maps for where they will look for Cricket. Beckan assumes they'll be sneaking around, like she and Scrap used to (why did they stop? Why did the end of the war make them stop?), but Piccolo says no, that being visible is part of the plan. Being visible lets them know that every member of a resistance is important and together.