How to Kill Yourself in a Small Town (29 page)

Desty

For
a while, I watched Colt talk to himself through the door’s broken window. I
wanted to make sure he wasn’t contemplating the best way to commit suicide, but
trying to keep up with a one-sided schizophrenic conversation was like
listening to someone with earbuds in sing a song they don’t know.

Another
paper cut memory—lying with my head on Tough’s shoulder, listening to his mp3
player, even though it was so hot we had to keep wiping the sweat on the
sheets. That had been just yesterday. Why couldn’t we go back to that?

On
the porch, Colt pushed himself up and walked to the shed at the tree line.

He
was taller than Tough and his skin had a lighter undertone, but the family
resemblance was there in more than just the hair and eyes. They stood the same,
walked the same. On Colt it came off as deadly competence, the equivalent of
staring someone down. On Tough it was all attitude. I could imagine Tough in a
fight with a guy twice his size. He might not win, but he would mess the other
guy up enough that it wouldn’t matter.

A
few seconds after Colt went into the shed, the light inside came on and it
occurred to me that I should check on him. The drain unclogger was probably in
the cabin if it was anywhere, but I remembered another comment from the message
boards about someone whose cousin had hung himself in the barn.

I
walked down to the shed and looked in the half-open door.

Colt
had a broadsword. An honest-to-God broadsword—three foot blade, two-handed grip,
shiny, pointy, lethal end—and he was swinging it around like it wasn’t nearly
as heavy or as deadly as it looked. The way he moved with it, even the way he
breathed with it, said Colt absolutely knew what he was doing and there was no
way I’d be able to stop him if he wanted to use that thing.

Not
only that, but the walls of the shed were lined with racks of swords, battle
axes, pole arms, maces, mauls—everything you’d need to accurately reenact a
medieval war fantasy. There was even a matched pair of crossbows. All along the
door-side wall were racks of shotguns, rifles, and machine guns, pistol cases,
ammo boxes, and bandoliers of ammunition. In the far corner under a faded,
duct-taped, sliced-up punching bag was a metal locker marked Semtex-H.

Semtex.
Plastic explosive.

“Holy
crap,” I said.

Colt
spun around, real-life-freaking-broadsword ready to chop my head off. There
wasn’t any sort of recognition in his blue-green eyes.

“It’s
me,” I squeaked. I put up my hands to show I wasn’t a threat. They practically
vibrated. “Desty. Modesty. Do you remember me, Colt? Tough’s girlfriend?
Grace?”

It
probably wasn’t more than a few seconds before he brought the sword down, but
it seemed like forever.

“I
wouldn’t have hurt you,” Colt said, letting the point of the sword rest on the
shed’s dirt floor. “I knew who you were.”

“It’s
just…the arsenal that scared me,” I lied.

He
looked around like the weaponry wasn’t something he’d ever considered.

“I
think there used to be more. Most of it was confiscated after the war. This is
just what we recovered. And I guess we sold some of it.” He tossed the sword up
to eye-level and caught it near the middle of the blade, point-down. There was
a cross etched down the length of the sword’s blade. “But this was one of
ours.”

I
stepped into the shed.

“Jax
told me that your dad, um, trained you all,” I said. I had just sort of assumed
since Daniel Whitney had been a pastor that ‘training’ had meant ‘Onward,
Christian Soldiers,’ not ‘Full Metal Jacket.’ I looked around. “So Tough can use
this stuff, too?”

“Not
legally,” Colt said. “Everyone who signed the armistice had to swear they’d
never carry or use a weapon. It took a while after the war, but Tough signed,
too.”

“When
you say ‘the war,’ you mean the NP-Human Conflict?” I asked.

“That’s
what the traitors and the cowards call it,” he said.

“Uh—”
Duh, self—just duh!
Of course the semantics were a big deal to somebody
who’d fought—whose family had died fighting—than to somebody who had only seen
the updates from the warzone when they interrupted her cartoons.

Colt
cocked his head at me and half-smiled. “I was just kidding, Grace. It was a
joke.”

“Oh.”
I tried to laugh. It sounded as awkward as it felt. I swiped my bangs out of my
face. “Sorry. I kind of suck at basic human interaction. Until recently, I
never really had to do it. My sister handled pretty much all that stuff when we
were growing up. Actually, you might know her—Tempie. Temperance? She’s
Kathan’s familiar.”

Colt’s
fist tightened around the sword grip enough that I could hear the leather
creak.

“I
didn’t mean to upset you—”

“No,”
he said, looking down. “It’s not that. I just didn’t…get out much with Mikal.”

“Yeah,
Tempie said her and Kathan almost never leave the bedroom.” Then I realized
what I was saying.
Way to make things less awkward by bringing up
sex-marathons.

But
Colt didn’t seem to notice. He kept staring down at the floor. He looked like
he had the day I took the tour of the Dark Mansion—like he’d left his body
behind. Well, that minus being naked and on Mikal’s leash.

“They
need a lot of attention to make up for what they lost when they fell,” he said.

I
shifted from one foot to the other and tried to find anything else to talk
about.

“Dammit,”
Colt said. Then continued as if he was arguing with someone. “It’s not that
hard to understand. Everybody else deserted me. She didn’t. She protected me.
It’s just basic psychology. Yeah, basic you’re-batshit-fucking-crazy
psychology.”

I
didn’t touch him in case he was on the edge of another meltdown, but I got
close enough to make him look me in the eyes.

“You’re
not crazy, Colt. I’ve read a lot about the emotional and psychological effects
of being a familiar and—”

“I
read those AIPM articles, too,” he said. “Fairhaven Syndrome and
objectification, right? But there weren’t any articles that mentioned a
familiar who had his burning angel forced out and then came back to life.”

“Burning
angel?”

A
dark blush bled into Colt’s cheeks.

“Fallen
angel,” he whispered. “I said ‘fallen angel.’”

“Colt,
I’m sorry, I—”

“I
think her getting forced out destroyed a lot. If this was all going according
to the articles, I should be able to remember everything from before, shouldn’t
I?” He scratched the irritated skin of his throat where the collar had been.
“And I should be begging like a good dog.”

“Maybe
you’re different,” I said, but it seemed like he wasn’t listening.

“If
I tried to cope with the objectification by creating Ryder— But I should still
be able to remember what my parents looked like, shouldn’t I?”

“Maybe
none of this is permanent.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“I
sure hope not,” Colt said. “Not that you’re not cute, Grace, but I can’t keep
listening to Ryder going on about how Tough wouldn’t know what to do with an
ass like yours.”

My
face got hot, but I tried to pretend like I didn’t notice. “My name isn’t—”

“Yeah,
well, whatever the first one was, it’s obviously fucked beyond repair,” Colt
said. “I wouldn’t have planned for a survival contingency. So fucking come up
with something else. Just shut the hell up for a second.” Colt looked at me.
“You’re tired.”

It
took me a second to realize he’d gone full circle from talking to me, to
himself or maybe someone else, and then back around to me.

“It’s
getting late,” I said. “Do you want to come inside and get some sleep?”

“That’s
all right. I’m going to drill for a while.”

My
expression must’ve given me away.

“Don’t
worry,” he said. “I’m not going to kill myself tonight. When I’m training…
Moving helps me think.”

He
hadn’t denied wanting to commit suicide—that’s the first thing I would have
done if I wanted someone to leave me alone so I could do it—and it wasn’t as if
Colt would be worried that I might be able to stop him or even slow him down if
he wanted to kill himself.

I
started to go.

“She’s
just going inside. Don’t be such a pussy.”

I
turned back around.

Colt
closed his eyes.

“Shit,”
he said. “You heard that.”

“I
can stay out here if it would make you feel better,” I said.

He
shook his head and swung the broadsword up onto his shoulder.

“I’ll
come in later,” he said.

“You’re
not alone,” I said. “I’m here and Tough will be back.”

“No,
he won’t,” Colt said.

“You
don’t know that,” I said.

“No
one comes back, Grace.” The way Colt was looking at me—it was like he did know.
Like he’d been there a million times.

Before
he could say anything else, I turned around and ran up to the cabin.

When
I made it inside, the broken countertop and the door’s empty window pane were
glaring at me.

God,
was I the only one who couldn’t see how delusional I was? I smacked both palms
on the lip of the sink as hard as I could. The sting ran down my fingers and up
my wrists. Tempie might’ve been on a one-way train to self-destruction, but at
least she could accept reality for what it was. No one stayed—not even if they
loved you—and no one ever came back. You either kept moving or you got left
behind.

Colt

“How
about we start with the obvious question,” Ryder said, nodding at the punching bag.
“What the fuck you were doing stabbing the shit out of that?”

I
spun the sword back to attention and stopped moving.

A
piece of six-inch PVC pipe was screwed to the side of the punching bag where a
holster or sword would hang if it was a person. The cuts in the bag had all
been made from below, a straight blade stabbed upward, probably in close
quarter combat. And there were lip-prints. My face got hot and I looked to see
whether Ryder had noticed them.

Ryder’s
always had a high-pitched laugh for a guy like him.

“You
get lonely or were you practicing for Mikal?”

For
a second I was back there. I felt Mikal’s open mouth on mine, her forked tongue
slithering through my lips and up the back of my throat into my nasal cavity. I
couldn’t breathe or move my hands. They were cuffed behind me and I was scared
as hell because that wasn’t part of the plan. Then Mikal’s burning-tar essence
flooded my brain.

The
memory disappeared. I was back in the shed.

“Well,
you can’t blame a guy for trying,” Ryder said. “Course, you can blame him for
being retarded. Did you really think she’d just tell you to kneel down and take
it? She ain’t stupid, Sunshine. Even after she had you in the lunatic’s cell
for a week, she wouldn’t just assume she had you broke.”

I
tried to keep breathing. Focus on the light in the shed, the sword in my hand.
But every time I blinked a web of glowing, red lines flickered onto the backs
of my eyelids. I could feel the black noise collecting at the base of my skull,
ready to drown my brain.

“Get
your shit together, Colt.” Ryder’s voice was like a jolt from a Taser. I’d
heard him say that before. He had grabbed me by the back of the neck and
whispered it so loud and so sharp that it drowned out my screaming.

“I
can help you numb the crazy, Sunshine,” Ryder said, pushing away from the wall.
“But you got to be working out a plan to put this right or everything from Mom
dying on will’ve been for fuck-all.”

“How
the hell am I supposed to do that?” I asked. “I don’t even remember what the
first plan was.”

“Boo-fucking-hoo,”
Ryder said. “Think. Real hard. Why ain’t you hitting the bottle right now?
That’d be the easiest thing to do—get drunk.”

“That’d
be what you would do,” I said.

“No,
what I would do is get you shitfaced. You’re a cunt when you’re sober.” Then
Ryder laughed. “You remember that time we got drunk off our asses and snuck
over to the edge of the farm?”

I
remembered standing at the tree line in the back pasture, howling at the Dark
Mansion like a couple of moon-crazy werewolves and firing off a 12-gauge until
we heard a four wheeler coming. Then we took off back to where we’d stashed the
truck.

“We
parked out on that little dirt road that connects to Old 63,” I said because it
seemed like an important detail. “Why doesn’t Kathan keep a guard on that
road?” Anybody with a dozen people could come in and surround the Dark Mansion.
That was how the angels had ambushed our camp and ended the war in the first
place.

Ryder
shrugged. “Nobody takes Old 63 anymore. Bet you fifty bucks most people around
here forgot that dirt road even exists. Why waste the manpower?”

I
shook my head. That train of thought wasn’t taking me anywhere. I couldn’t
think like this, holding still.

“Want
to practice?” I asked.

Ryder
grinned.

“Here
I thought you’d never ask.” He tossed his spit bottle.

Before
the bottle hit the ground, Ryder had a shortsword in one hand and a poleax in
the other. I just barely blocked the ax from hacking open my face. He went for
my ribs with the sword, but I caught his wrist before he did any damage.

Fighting
another physical body felt so good. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it.
Stretching out, getting into the rhythm, even the little scratches and bangs
that wouldn’t make any difference in the long run—it was like Heaven getting
all that back. But training by myself for so long had gotten me used to acting
instead of reacting and a month stuck inside my own head had thrown off my
reflexes. Ryder chopped and sliced and shoved me across the shed.

My
left side smashed into the rack of automatic rifles. Metal thudded into wood
and I almost tripped myself trying to take a step. He’d pinned my pants leg to
a stud with his shortsword.

“Dammit,
Ryder, these’re my only fucking jeans!”

Ryder
swung the ax at me. I blocked, but just barely. I was at a bad angle and I
couldn’t turn right to throw him off or I’d rip the hole in my jeans bigger.

“Aw,
pussy baby don’t want to get his clothes dirty?” Ryder laughed that high-pitched
laugh and leaned harder on the ax. My arms started shaking. “Somebody been too
busy fucking the enemy to practice.”

“You
think I wanted to be her bitch?”

Ryder
started jolting the ax. “I think you wanted her attention pretty fucking bad to
be sniping her familiars with no suppressor and no cover.”

My
jeans tore free from the wall as I threw him off.

It
was a trap. Ryder let the ax go flying and punched me in the throat with his
off-fist. I tried to cough my trachea back into shape.

He
grabbed my wrists and tried to wrench the broadsword away. When that didn’t
work, he went for the head-butt. I brought my jaw up at the last second so that
he hit my teeth. It hurt like a bitch, but Ryder came out of it with a bloody
cut across the bridge of his nose and forehead. He stumbled back a step. I
dropped the broadsword and tackled him.

We
rolled across the floor and hit the Semtex locker in the opposite corner.

“Colt?”
That was a girl’s voice.

Ryder
kicked me off and stood up.

The
shed door opened and Grace came in as I was getting to my feet.

“Are
you all right?” she asked, her eyes jumping all over my face. “What the heck
happened?”

“I’m
fine. I—” I looked behind me at Ryder. He was sitting on the Semtex locker,
holding his spit bottle. No blood, no cuts, no sweat. Not even out of breath.

Grace
took a step closer to me. “You didn’t come in last night, did you?”

“Last
night?” I said. Her hair was wet as if she’d just taken a shower and the sky
showing through the door was starting to turn predawn-gray. “What time is it?”

“Around
five-thirty,” she said. “Maybe you should come inside.”

I
stared down Ryder. He shook his head like he was disgusted with me. I flipped
him off before I remembered that Grace was watching.

If
she was something I had made up, shouldn’t she be able to see Ryder? And if she
couldn’t see Ryder and she was real, what would be the least crazy way to
explain that I was flipping off my dead brother who I didn’t always remember
was dead and who might actually just be brain damage?

“Colt?”
Grace asked.

I
licked my lips and got a mouthful of blood that tasted real.

“I’m
fine,” I said. “I just…fell or something.”

“Come
on,” she said, nodding toward the cabin. “You should at least get something to
drink. It’s already pretty hot out for being so early and dehydration sucks.”

I
hung the broadsword on its rack and picked up Ryder’s ax. The shortsword was
still stuck in the stud next to the automatic rifles. A piece of my jeans was
pinned under it. So either my mental construct could kick my ass or I could
kick my own ass and tell myself it was him.

“Shit.”

“Yeah,
shit,” Ryder said.

I
dropped his ax onto its hooks and headed for the shed door.

Grace
followed me up to the cabin.

In
the kitchen I turned on the faucet, filled a glass, and left the water running
while I gulped it down. I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was. It hit my stomach
hard and cold, but I had to drain two more glasses before I felt like I could
slow down. I scratched my arm. Dried salt built up under my fingernails.

So
I’d been drilling and arguing with Ryder—or maybe myself—all night. Thinking
that made me feel dizzy. I turned around and leaned against the sink to catch
my breath.

Grace
was standing by the table watching me. When I caught her eye, she shifted feet
and tried hooking her bangs over her ear even though they weren’t long enough.

“I
was just wondering— Remember how I told you about my sister, Kathan’s familiar?
I wondered whether there was any way to tell if he was hurting her.”

I
tried to think of a nice way to say ‘no.’

“Things
look different from the outside.” That was the best I could come up with. “From
the inside out, she might not even— I mean, hell, just trying to think is—”

“You
fucking retard,” Ryder said. “You’re going to make her cry again.”

Grace’s
eyes were dry, but she was biting her lips together.

“I’m
sorry.” I rubbed the back of my neck, felt the calloused skin from the collar.
It had been so much easier to think while I was moving. Now everything was
piling up and the screaming in my head wouldn’t stop. “Kathan’s different from
Mikal. He’s an alpha, so it’s all about power, right? And didn’t you say your
sister wanted to be his familiar? He would probably take care of her just
because she wanted to be his.”

Grace
nodded. She looked so tired.

“Maybe
you should get some sleep,” I said.

“You’re
the one who stayed up all night,” she said, giving me a fake smile.

“Yeah.”
I scratched some more of the sweat-grit off my arm. “I need to get a shower.”

This
time Grace’s smile was real and it made her look like someone’s little sister.

“I
wasn’t going to say anything, but—” She shrugged. “—you kind of do.”