Intrepid (9 page)

But mirrors and sinks and stalls didn’t exist because all I could see were my eyes.

Purples swirled around my pupils like rolling thunder-caps. They took on shadings similar to a sunset, except these colors traveled from black to navy, to violet, to lavender before meeting my everyday celery-green. “I’m going crazy,” I whispered. I blinked and willed the purples to go away, but they only darkened the stronger my headache got. I stared at myself so hard that my face blurred in the mirror and my sight lost all focus.
   

I slammed my palm on the sink. “I’m going crazy.” I said it again as if saying it out loud was safer than keeping the thought inside. It was as if letting it out could disprove the claim, and as I said it, something deep down promised me I wasn’t crazy. Something that went deeper than instinct told me there was something really off about me, and there always had been.
 

“Don’t cry,” I said, but whatever was left of the mascara was already streaming down my freckles in soft, black rivers. “Count to ten.” It worked last time, and I had to believe it’d work this time. The number ten could definitely take away crazy-eyes. I breathed, and I concentrated on my surroundings rather than my situation. The bathroom smelled of bleach and mold. The air was stale, like not much moved through it. The feel was empty.
 

And empty was how I forced myself to feel as I counted.
 

One.
 

Two.
 

Three.
   

“Texi?” Iago said from the door.

I closed my eyes and took another breath. “Go away.”
 

“You okay?” He came into the bathroom and put his hand on my shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“Please. Just. Go.” The swirling in my eyes felt like the soft shuddering sensation you get when someone grazes your skin with their fingertips. It was a feeling that should never exist on the eyes, and when I closed them, the itching only intensified.
 

“Look at me.” His voice was urgent, but I kept my eyes squeezed shut. I couldn’t let him see them. I knew that either purples were still swimming around the irises and I was a freak, or they weren’t and I was crazy. Either way, he was the last person I wanted to witness it all.
 

He grabbed my chin between his forefinger and thumb and moved my face so that it was pointed towards his. He squeezed my hand with his other, and said, “It’s okay. Look at me.” The gentleness in his voice made me remember a time when I trusted him with every secret and story. I was scared, and maybe he was right. Maybe I could use a brother. Maybe I could use some help.
 

When I opened my lids, the brightness was overwhelming. I had to blink away florescent spots before my eyes could zero in on his. He examined my face, and I searched for any traces of shock or confusion. The only thing I caught was clarity, like he’d just found an elusive answer for a hard test question.
 

“Just like when we were kids,” Iago said. “
Respirar en, respirar hacia fuera.
Breathe in. Breathe out.” The tone of his repetition brought me back to when I was seven, and we had slumber parties all the time because Ringo kept having to go out of town. We’d build blanket forts in front of the T.V., and Iago always wanted to watch scary movies despite the fact that they always gave me nightmares. He’d wake me up and talk me back to reality: “
Respirar en, respirar hacia fuera.”
I tired to match my breathing with his hyperbolic example breaths, and if my head hadn’t been exploding, I would have found the scene funny. He held my head between his hands like he was worried it’d float off like a balloon, and the coolness of his palms anchored me to the room we were in. For a brief moment I lived in the calmness that existed there. The pressure of my eyes pulled back the way the ocean pulls back water at low tide, and the dizziness in my brain stilled.

The gesture from anyone else would have felt intimate. Instead, Iago just made me feel safe, like he knew exactly how to take away this new experience of pain. “See. You’re okay,” Iago whispered over and over again. “You’re okay.” And suddenly, I felt okay.
 

My chest heaved up and down like my heart was going to tear out of my chest with velociraptor claws. I examined the marbled cracks in his eyes, and the way they spread out every shade of green.
 

“Thank you,” I whispered.
 

He smiled, but then we heard the door hinges move.
 

“Um… Iago…” Crystal said from the open door. She looked at us with stories forming on her tongue as Iago dropped his hands away from my face. “You’re Homecoming King,” Crystal said what she came in there for. “They’re waiting on you to start the dance.”
 

“Tell them I’m not here,” Iago said, but there were already faces peeking into the restroom.
 

I couldn’t move or breathe for a different reason. It wasn’t what it looked like—Iago and me standing in the bathroom with my face in his hands—but even I knew that rumors were things with wings.
 

Liam

A twofold tale I shall tell:

At one time it grew to be one

In solitude

Out of many:
 

Another grew apart to be many

Out of the singular.
 

Double is the birth of all things mortal,

And double their destruction,

For one is brought to birth and destroyed by the coming together of all things,

The other is nurtured and deconstructs to drift apart again.
 

This continual exchange refuses to cease.
 

But it is Love all coming together into one,
 

Only to be deconstructed into the hatred of Strife.
 

The two exist always in this changeless cycle.
 

Love being the coagulator,
 

Strife being the deconstruct-or.
 

And in this, we know that one cannot exist without the other.

-Empedocles
 

-S-1200, V-49098-L9098645678, Prod.

Chapter Twelve

I pulled the line in, and the wire re-spooled around the reel. The hour Nobu was supposed to be gone came and went, which meant he was visiting a certain someone. I wished he had hurried on his supply run because we could have spent a couple more hours tracking Arti, but now the bottom of the sun kissed the waves and Arti would have to wait.
 

Instead of being upset by this, I decided to revel in the peace and quiet because, even though it was only Nobu and me on this boat, it was nice to know I was completely alone in this space and time.
 
The only fish biting were the green-gills, with their rainbowed fins and squishy eyes. They weren’t my favorite, but they were tasty when fried.
 

I cast the line back out, and waited for another bite. After ten more minutes of this, the sun was all but gone from the sky. The green-gills never bit in the dark, so I reeled it back in one last time.
 

“Catch anything?” Nobu’s voice drifted from the deck above, and although it startled me, I didn’t let on how much. He was a sneaky bastard, and he loved giving me crap anytime I wasn’t as aware of my surroundings as I should have been. He was all about keeping me on my toes.
 

“Enough for my dinner, but you, my friend, are shit out of luck.”
 

“Then no ice cream for you!” he yelled and held up a bag.
 

“You didn’t!”

“Mint chocolate chip and raspberry crème.”
 

I laughed. “Fine. Fine. I’ll share my fish. Meet you in the galley,” I called up to him, but he’d already headed that way.

I latched the hook on the third ring of the rod and dropped the pole off in the gear cupboard. Then I grabbed the three fish I did catch and headed to the galley. Nobu was already in the kitchen putting the groceries away and humming a tune that only meant one thing.
 

“Supplies, huh? How was
Biiii-ly
?” I stretched out the name and falsetto-ed my voice to really dig in and felt a sense of victory when he blushed. His “supply runs” kept lasting longer and longer lately. Last week, he was gone an entire day.

“Mock all you wish, but one day, you’ll understand.”
 

I shook my head no and pulled out the fillet knife and a cutting board so I could clean the green-gills. “I understand plenty. There isn’t time for that.”
 

A look of deep sadness fluttered onto his face. “You won’t be stuck on this boat forever. In the near future, you’ll be allowed your first leave.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m going to seek out a love life, Nobu.” I tried not to be frustrated by this conversation. We always talked about him when it came to this stuff, and I didn’t like that the tables had been turned in the course of a few measly sentences.
 

“Just wait until you meet the right girl… or will it be a boy?”

It was the first time he’d ever asked me my preference, and I blushed. “Dude. You know how you’ve always known you’re into boys? I’ve always known I’m into girls.”
 

Nobu laughed. “Fair enough, dear brother of mine, but you’ve never even met a girl before.”
 

“Not my fault.” I snorted as I wrenched the knife into the belly of the green-gill. Scales sparkled under the lighting, and I almost felt guilty destroying something so beautiful.
 

“Well, that might change, and you’ll never know what attraction feels like until someone makes you feel it.”
 

“There won’t be anyone like that for me. Not if I’m gonna make Grande Master by the time I’m your ripe old age.”
 

Nobu pulled out some potatoes and began peeling them. “Your sense of duty is commendable, but you are human. Part of being human is the ability to love.”
 

“And part of being human is wanting to save humanity. I’m not an Explorer. I’ve had my entire life to come to terms with my role in this. I Stand on the Shoulders of Giants, not some girl.”
 

The potato in his hand took on a maroon shade of red under the water he rinsed it in. Nobu had something on the tip of his tongue, but he was avoiding saying it. After a lifetime on a boat with someone, you start to notice when they hold back and when they give it to you straight. Lately, Nobu had been holding back a lot. Instead of saying what he wanted to, he said, “Well. Technically, you have one girl in your life.”

“Har. Har. Speaking of, Geronimo wrote another piece about Texi.”
 

“Any clues in it?”

“Nope. Only that he thinks the Change will happen. I don’t blindly agree with him, but I have a feeling he’s right.”
 

“You’ve been in the sun too much, and your brain is fried,” Nobu said. “There’s a seventy-five percent chance one canceled out the other. Even if she’s showing symptoms, it doesn’t mean she’ll survive the side effects. If anything, I bet she dies within the week. It’s too much for a brain to handle.” I couldn’t tell if there was malice or fear in his voice.
 

“That’s cruel.”
 

“Cruel? Or true? Look at this objectively. What they did to her isn’t natural, and no brain should have access to what they have tried to give her. She’s as good as dead. Have you seen the circles forming under her eyes? The headaches are coming, which may not be the good sign you think it is.”
 

Just talking about her headaches began to trigger one of my own, and I gripped the filet knife a little harder as I cut. “I see where you’re coming from. There’s so many things that can go wrong before they go right, but sometimes, Creation gets lucky. Take Earth. Had it been the wrong distance from the sun or a different mix of chemicals, there’d be no life on it. So many improbable things happened so that Earth could sustain existence. The improbable is just as possible as the probable. You might be right, but there’s still a twenty-five percent chance you’re one-hundred percent wrong.”
 

“Touché,” Nobu said. His expression was pained when he looked at me, and I got the overwhelming feeling he knew something more.
 

“Are you afraid of her?” I asked.

“Aren’t you?”

“You saw it then? In her eyes?”
 

Nobu nodded. We found the same things in our Condensing after all, and it worried him as much as it worried me. “As much as we can hope for the best, we can’t forget she’s dangerous,” he said, for what felt like the millionth time.
   

“Dangerous or not, we have a responsibility to objectivity. We can’t jump to conclusions on this one,” I said. That was the thing about Texi. It was easier to fear her than to try and understand her. It was a curse she didn’t realize she carried.
 

He nodded. His tanned hands zoomed over one potato after another with the peeler. “Speaking of Jumping, I’m guessing by the look on your face that the headaches are getting worse.”
 

I nodded.
 

“Appreciate these moments. It means your brain is growing. Let me know when they start happening in intervals of twenty minutes.”
 

I grinned over the pain in my head. I’d been waiting for this my entire life.
 

The Change was coming.
 

Chapter Thirteen

I rubbed my fingers over the rows and rows of books on the shelves in the den and pulled out the one that was the most tattered.
 

The Manifesto
.
 

I sat down and opened it up, examining the margins where my handwriting layered between Nobu’s. Since we were kids we wrote our own thoughts into the text. Corbin taught us that it was a different form of data collection on the self. He told us, “With annotations, you can see what you used to think and compare it with what you currently think on a text. Experience has a way of changing how you look at things. Remember that.”