Of Delicate Pieces (16 page)

He stopped to hold the door for an elderly lady leaving the market. Alex did a double take when the woman thanked him.

“She can see us?”

Kaleb led them to a building with a window shaped like a wave. “They can all see us here. The town is in on our secret.”

Alex couldn’t believe it. Imagine thinking it was normal to spot a ghost while you went out to buy milk.

“They keep quiet about us, and in exchange we give them all the money from the haunted house every year. They make bank on the fall tourism and live comfortably because of us.”

They thought themselves into wetsuits and rented boards from a tanned, muscular man that spoke to them in surf jargon Alex didn’t understand. The boys bobbed their heads in agreement to whatever he said, but Alex remained shell-shocked by the whole ordeal. The guy asked her if her name was Judith, and when Kaleb scolded him, he slapped his knee and called her Bunny instead.

When his brothers trotted out to the ocean, Chase gave Alex a quick lesson. The instructions jumbled in her head, but she knew they’d remain in her memory until she could smooth them out. Like magic, when she needed to paddle, she remembered to crawl stroke. The terms “pearling” and “corking” presented themselves as reminders that despite her weightlessness, she needed to pretend to act like one of the bodied. When she waited for waves, her mind shuffled through the etiquette; but, the chill of the ocean water drained her energy much like the effects of cold weather. Alex would rather lounge on the board recharging under the beams of the sun, like a human battery pack.

She wondered how this experience would have felt if they were alive. She and Chase grew up spending their summers on boats, but while the Lasalles learned to wakeboard and Jet Ski, Alex kept her crippled body in the boat. It was something she complained about but didn’t mind because she was afraid of anything she couldn’t see. It was impossible to see anything more than a foot under the murky waters of the Chesapeake Bay.

“You want the next one, Alex?” Kaleb asked.

“No, thanks.”

“Sure? I would’ve thought you’d be eating these waves.”

She liked the idea of it all. The freedom. But she didn’t want to move right now.

“Alex, do you know what’s going on over there with Skye?” Gabe asked.

Alex didn’t open her eyes. “She’s afraid of the water.”

“No. I mean, why she’s talking to Pax.”

Alex lifted her head and squinted through the sun. “Is she with Kaleb’s stalker, too? Skye’s distant cousin?”

Kaleb came to Skye’s defense. “She said they’re barely related. Her last name wasn’t even Gossamer in life. She changed it when she got here so everyone would know her family.” He continued to stare at the scene on the beach. “You said Pax is the legacy leader? She’s kind of cute.”

“I’m more interested in what she
knows
,” Gabe said.

“Yes, she does kind of have a big nose,” Kaleb joked.

“I’m serious. Skye told me that someone had news about Jonas.”

Alex sat up on her board. “Xavier Darwin said Pax’s family runs the Interactions Department.”

“Interacting with people he shouldn’t be? That sounds like something our darling brother would do, doesn’t it?” Gabe asked.

Kaleb flopped to his stomach and began paddling in frenzied strokes to get to the beach. Gabe thought practically and projected himself to shore.

Chase didn’t budge. “Let them go.”

Alex slouched on her board and lifted her palms as if to say,
Really
? “Are you ever going to forgive him?”

“That depends. Are you ever going to blame him?”

She didn’t know. She watched her board bob up and down.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what I feel. He set us up. He set
me
up at least.”

“He’s still your brother.”

“I don’t need to be reminded of that. I held his hand when we crashed in that car. I watched him slip out of life, and it
ripped
me apart. But he didn’t hesitate to put me in harm’s way. That’s not a brother. That’s not love.” He splashed the water and held the droplets in midair with his mind, merging them together and letting them fall. “Not love for me or for you, no matter what he might have said to you.”

Jonas never said those words to her unless it was part of a joke. Come to think of it, she never heard Jonas say he loved anyone.

She rocked up and down with the water, thinking about the concept of it all. “What do you think love is?”

Love. The word hung in the air, twinkling, lightening the bitterness of the previous topic.

“It definitely isn’t selfish. So I’m not sure if it’s something Jonas will ever truly choose to experience.”

Alex leaned back to stare at the sky. “Oh, I don’t think it’s something you choose.”

Chase rolled off his board and made no sound when he fell into the water. “Whoops,” he said when he emerged. “I wasn’t concentrating on that.”

“No one is paying attention to us,” Alex noted with a careless wave of her hand. “If they already know what we are, does it matter anyway?”

“I think this is like a practice arena for the real world. We should be trying to be normal when we’re here whether it matters or not.”

Chase remained in the water but rested his forearms on the side of Alex’s board. Water droplets sparkled on his long eyelashes, and he glistened under the light from the sun. She couldn’t help but reach out and touch him. Make sure for the millionth time that he was real. Her fingertips touched his energy, and his warmth was more powerful than the light from the sun.

She lifted her head to meet his lips, and he wrapped an arm over her, accepting, and through her lips he answered, “That is love.”

He kissed her again, sliding his hand underneath her head to raise her closer to him. “That energy. That pulse.” He turned his head in the other direction. “I know you can feel it. I always could. Since the moment we were born. Maybe before then. And now I can even see it.”

A small piece of her could see it, too, through the colors in Chase’s mind. His hand lowered to her abdomen and whatever heartbeat was left in him transferred straight to her belly.

That song of the ocean, it wasn’t so sad anymore. It was louder, faster, as though they had the power to alter its mood. It fed off of them.

Chase straightened, breaking their kiss. “Whoa.”

Little Gossamer perched on a board beside them. She lifted her sunglasses and placed them on her head. “Hi, I’m Gretchen.”

“Nice timing,” said Chase.

“Sorry.”

“You don’t look sorry.”

Her jovial expression didn’t falter.

“I thought your name was
Little
,” Chase said. “That’s what my brother calls you.”

“Kaleb?” she squealed. “He does? Call me Little, then. I like that.”

Alex thought the name suited her better anyway. “Did you project yourself out here?”

She waved it off. “Yeah.”

Chase tightened his grasp on Alex’s board, bobbing up and down in the waves.

“Is she with you?” Little gestured to the beach where Rae was turning cartwheels. Kaleb and Gabe were gone, and Skye’s rock was also vacant.

Alex sat up. “Our friends were down there with her. I don’t know where they went.”

“I’m not judging.” Her cheer was musical. “She’s beautiful. Lost Ones don’t usually cling to spirits though. I wanted to introduce myself the other day, Alex, but Pax stole you away. I’ve heard all about you.”

Alex propped up on her elbows. “Yeah, I got into some trouble last year.”

“No, I mean I knew about you before I died. You’re famous.”

“Huh?”

“I grew up gifted.”

Chase let go of Alex’s board and projected himself onto his own. “You’re gifted? And they let you in?” He seemed to realize what he said. “I’m sorry. That didn’t sound right.”

She grasped her board with both hands as a wave pushed them back. “It’s okay. I didn’t live in one of the isolated gifted towns. Those witches know better than to choose the afterlife. They never do. Except Duvall, I guess. She was pretty excited to meet me, but I think I disappointed her because I don’t know anything about the gifted life. My parents wanted me to have a normal childhood, but they still told me the stories.”

Good thing she didn’t need to breathe because the girl rambled in one long breath.

Chase ran his fingers along the edge of the water. “You’re so young. I thought the gifted lived longer than most of the bodied.”

She shrugged. “Being gifted doesn’t save you from cancer.”

For a second, her projection withered, her hair vanished, and her face sunk in. In a flash, she was back to being beautiful.

“If you’re gifted,” Chase said, “it’s kind of weird that you’re best friends with the biggest advocate for the Interactions Department.”

“Pax was so nice to me the first day I died. She wants me to help with the Truce March.”

There it was again. The idea of a Truce March gave Alex a funny feeling. “I always heard that the gifted and the spirited weren’t friendly.”

Little laughed and small pings lifted from the water like fish jumping. “It depends on who you ask.”

Chase cleared his throat. “She gathered her information from the Bonds.”

“That explains it. That family is nuts. My parents always said the spirited don’t bother the gifted, and the gifted don’t bother the spirits. Those are the rules.”

Chase ran his hands along the surface of the water. “Then why did your parents keep you away from the others?”

“I didn’t know there were others, or that there were colonies, until I died.”

“You knew about Alex though?”

She wagged her finger. “I knew about Sephi Anovark. My parents told me bedtime stories about the revolutionary who made the world a better place.”

“Why are the gifted celebrating Alex’s death, then? If everything is so perfect already?”

“Wouldn’t you celebrate if someone who made the world better returned? Do you have any clue what it used to be like? How the gifted were treated? Sephi gave us what we have today. She’s the reason for our freedom.” Several uncomfortable seconds passed. Little bent toward Alex as if waiting for her to say something. “Do you really know nothing about life before Sephi Anovark?”

“Something Sigorny L. hasn’t already shared with the world?”

Little’s eyes lit up. “I’m heading to Main Street in a little bit. There’s this guy who has a shop with all sorts of cool stuff: antiques, trinkets, valuables. It might explain some things for you. If you want to know how the gifted used to be treated, I think you’ll want to come see this place. It’s right by the surf shop, and you’ll need to go there to return your boards anyway.”

Chase glanced at Alex, who
shrugged as if to say
Why not?
She didn’t think it was possible to find out anything she hadn’t already heard or suspected.

She should have realized by now that there’s always more.

Moribund felt staged to Alex. Like the set of a movie town, it was real but not. The locals on the sidewalks treated them like any other bodied children, and the shops waited with open doors and waving flags.

Chase slowed his pace. “Little said it was right by the board shop. There’s nothing else on this street.”

Rae kept walking, even after the sidewalk ended, treading down an overgrown path that snaked to the right and led to a slump of interconnected stores, supporting one another lest they might crumble. Alex wondered why they wouldn’t give these abandoned stores a facelift to match the rest of the town. A rickety sign dangled over a hunched building called Walt’s Plastics.

“Maybe we’re not looking at it right.” Chase bent down next to Rae. “You know, don’t you?”

Rae shimmied her tiny shoulders and her cheeks grew pink.

Chase held out a hand as he straightened, gesturing to the line of shops. “What is a plastics store? Sounds to me like no one would ever go in there, and if they wanted to, how would they get in? There’s no entrance!”

His words were like magic, opening their minds. Alex focused all her attention to the shops, this time looking through willing eyes, and in place of Walt’s Plastics was a sign that read:
Maori’s
.

Alex took Rae’s hand. “There’s still no door.”

Chase walked forward. “Will you ever get used to being dead?”

As if this was an easy feat. She placed her other hand over his to absorb the shock of stepping through the glass, the pins and needles that stabbed her being as she crossed through anything solid. Alex worried about Rae, but the transition didn’t seem to bother her. Rae ran the width of the entryway, breathing deeply.

The store smelled musty and dank. There were three archways, each protected by a curtain of dangling stones and bones. Behind the noosed objects, clusters of lights greeted them; it was like a vineyard of fireflies.

Rae let go of Alex’s hand and eagerly pushed her way through the closest curtain, trotting down the center aisle with her windblown hair and wrinkled, sandy dress.

“Don’t get lost,” Alex warned, and Rae poked her head back through the curtain with a childish smirk that read,
Yeah right
.

“Hoarders, eat your heart out,” Chase joked. “I’ll check out the far wall.”

Alex started toward the left, and then she understood Chase’s comment. The “fireflies” were actually tiny spotlights illuminating millions of trinkets for sale. The objects could have belonged in Duvall’s classroom: rusty jars and distorted minerals. Alex came to a stop midway down the aisle and read the caption glowing behind a black rock:
Bloodstone 100%; Value 5/10; Origin: India.
From vials to masks to jewelry, everything had a bright, hanging caption with a rating of its worth and its origin. The brightest light in the aisle spotlighted a red shield.

Authentic coral from the Witch Wars; Value 9/10; Origin: Astor, Oregon.

“Hi, there.”

Alex jumped in surprise, and a few of the lights flickered.

“Al?” Chase’s voice was muffled, hidden by the maze of walls in the store.

“I’m fine,” she called as she stared into the pretty face of Little Gossamer.

“Sorry to scare you.”