Push (18 page)

“She has to take aspirin every day and beta-blockers and something else that’s a blood thinner . . . it starts with a
P
. She was only in CICU one night; then they moved her to a regular room, and then they let her out of the hospital today. We’re flying home tonight,” she says, sounding happy and relieved. “Can you bring Daimon by? I miss his wavy blue fins.”

I glance at the bowl on the end table. “Sure.”

“How’s he doing?”

“Good.” Sort of a white lie. He didn’t eat yesterday. I ended up having to scoop all the food out after a few minutes so it didn’t taint the water. He didn’t eat this morning, either. I take a step closer to the end table. “He’s good.”

“Did you do the little trick where you put your finger in the water and he bumps up against it?”

I’m standing over the bowl now, looking at the fish. He’s not moving at all. Not even the flick of a fin. I dip my finger in the water and bump it against the little blue body with its fins sagging toward the bottom.

Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap.

“Yep. Bumped the fish in the water. Doing it right now. As we speak.” Truth. Sort of.

She laughs. “Gotta go. The taxi’s here to take us to the airport. See you soon.”

I stare at the fish, willing it to move. “You’re sleeping, right?”

Right. Sleep of the dead.

With a sigh, I text Luka. Twenty minutes later, he’s at my door. “What’s up?”

“I need you to look at something.”

“Okay.” He steps into the hall as I pull the door open. “How come you called me instead of Jackson?”

“Two reasons,” I say. A few weeks ago, Luka acted all territorial a couple of times in the game. It made me wonder if he was into me. But lately, I’ve had the feeling he’s into Carly. Hard to tell. “First, I just think you have this relationship with Carly.”

His eyebrows shoot up.

“I mean, a friendship . . . that you’re friends with her—”

“So’s Jackson.” He gives me a weird look.

“Second,” I continue as if he hadn’t interrupted, “Jackson took his mom grocery shopping because her car’s in the sho—” I break off as Luka laughs. “What?” I ask.

“When you met him, did you ever picture him taking his mom shopping?”

“Honestly? I never pictured him having a family.”

“You thought he just sort of arrived in the world preformed. Spawned.”

My turn to laugh. “Pretty much.”

Luka’s expression turns serious. “So what’s going on with Carly? Did you hear from her? She okay?”

“She’s okay.” Until she finds out about the fish. “Shoes,” I remind him.

He toes off his sneakers. House rules. Mom never let anyone wear shoes in the house, so I don’t, either. Just like Sofu never let anyone wear shoes in the dojo. It just isn’t something you do.

I lead him into the den. “Well?”

“Well what?” he spreads his hands.

“Is it dead?”

He looks at me. Looks around again. Finally spots the bowl sitting on the end table.

“Uh . . .” He stares at the bowl, reaches in, stirs the water in circles, stares at the fish, then pulls his hand out and looks for something to wipe it on. He’s reaching for the afghan that’s draped over the back of the sofa, the one my mom made when she was pregnant with me. I lunge for it and get it out of harm’s way.

“Use your jeans,” I say.

“It’s either dead, or”—he wipes first the front then the back of his hand on his jeans—“There’s no ‘or.’ It’s dead.”

“Oh God.” I bury my face in my hands. “I killed Carly’s fish.”

“Are you sure you killed it? If this is the same one she had before I went to Seattle, it’s, like . . . what . . . more than two years old? Maybe it just died of natural causes.”

“It’s still dead. After I promised I’d take care of it. What do we do?”

“We?” Luka’s brows shoot up. “You just tell her you’re sorry. I don’t know. Offer to hold a fish funeral?”

The front door slams. “Miki?”

“I killed Carly’s fish,” I wail.

Dad wanders into the den. Luka offers his hand.

“Don’t shake that,” I warn Dad. “He just had it in the water with the dead fish.”

“Right. Because it isn’t like I haul fish out of the lake all the time,” Dad says with a grin. Which is true, him being a fishing fanatic and all.

Still, he does this sort of half-wave-half-salute thing instead of shaking Luka’s hand.

Luka scrubs his hand on his thigh, then shoves it in his pocket.

Dad peers at the fish. “Buy her a new one. Make sure you look for one that has the same red tinge on the front fins.”

“You mean, like, don’t tell her the old one died?” Luka asks. “Just get her a replacement and try to pass it off?”

Dad shrugs. “That’s what I did with Miki’s turtle when she was six.”

“What?” I gasp. “Yurtle? You tricked me? What kind of thing is that to do to a six-year-old?”

“Better than having you freak out over the dead turtle. You never knew a thing. Yurtle one, two, and three kicked off within a couple of months of one another. Four stuck around for a while.”

I stare at his back as he wanders to the kitchen.

I remember my parents telling me Yurtle got out of his tank, that we might not find him. And I remember freaking out. Next morning, there was Yurtle, back in the tank. Was that version two, three, or four?

Was it better to let me blithely believe it was the same turtle all along? Or should my parents have told me the truth?

I agonize over the fish thing for hours. Actually, Luka and I rent a movie and I agonize intermittently during the slow parts.

As the final credits roll, I shift on the couch so I’m facing Luka with my legs crossed. A quick check reveals Dad to be nowhere in the near vicinity; he wandered upstairs about an hour ago and hasn’t come back down yet. Still, I lower my voice to a whisper. “Can I ask you some stuff?”

Luka narrows his eyes at me. “Depends on what sort of stuff.”

“Have you ever had nightmares about the game?”

“Not lately, but in the beginning, yeah. I was pretty freaked when I first got pulled.” He’s told me that before, when we finally talked after Richelle got killed. He studies my face for a few seconds, then asks, “Are you having nightmares?”

I nod. “Some. Not a lot. One that was different, though. It was weird. I know you said you didn’t see the girl who helped me when I got hurt last time”—and the Committee had claimed the same: that they hadn’t sent any other teams on that mission, that I was alone—“but I dreamed about her. She looked like Lizzie.”

Luka just stares at me blankly.

“Lizzie,” I repeat. “Jackson’s sister.”

“Jackson doesn’t—whoa,” Luka says after a pause. “You’re seeing the ghost of your boyfriend’s dead sister. That’s—” His brows shoot up and he shakes his head.

“She’s trying to tell me something, Luka. Something about the game. I saw Marcy and Kathy, and Marcy was laughing and Kathy was really small, like, smaller than my baby finger and—” I break off and stare at Luka as he starts laughing. “What?”

“You sure the nightmare was about the game? I mean, Marcy’s obviously . . . her and Jackson . . .” He holds up his hands as he realizes what he’s saying. “I don’t mean that the way it sounds. I know there is no
her and Jackson
. It’s just, she watches him all the time. She’s not exactly subtle. Actually, she watches both of you.”

“I know. I feel like every time I turn around she’s there with her posse, and it’s creepy.”

Luka stares at me, the laughter fading from his expression. “You don’t mean stalker creepy, do you?”

I shake my head and whisper, “Drau creepy.”

“You think Marcy Kern’s a shell?”

“No. Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.” I exhale in a rush.

“Her eyes are blue,” Luka says. “Light blue. Kind of icy. Not Drau gray.”

“Do shells have Drau eyes?” I ask.

Luka holds my gaze. I could ask him if he knows about Jackson’s eyes, if he’s seen them. We’ve never actually talked about that. It’s something Jackson and I keep between ourselves. At least, I think it is.

“Drau eyes?” He frowns, shrugs. “I have no clue. But I still think that if you’re having nightmares about Marcy it’s because she’s trying to get into Jackson’s pants—” At my chilly look, he finishes, “Just saying.”

I uncross my legs and cross them in the opposite direction, so my right foot’s now on top of my left. “Let’s forget about Marcy for a second. There’s something else. Near the end of the nightmare, I got pulled, and it felt real. Not like the rest of the dream. Real and . . . important.” I try to line up the details in my thoughts. “Have you ever been pulled somewhere other than the lobby?”

“All the time. So have you.”

“No, I’m not asking this right. I don’t mean pulled on missions. I mean pulled somewhere like the lobby but totally different. White and cold and . . . cold,” I finish lamely.

He shakes his head.

“Have you ever . . . brought your injuries back with you?”

“What? No. If we come back, we come back healed. What’s going on with you, Miki? What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing. Seriously, nothing.” I rub my left shoulder even though it doesn’t hurt, even though the marks that were there are gone. “Nothing,” I say again and cover my unease by stacking our empty glasses and offering Luka the last piece of sliced apple on the plate.

A little while later, Carly calls from the airport to tell me they’ve landed.

The pet store will be open for another half hour. I could make it. I could buy Daimon 2.0.

In the end, I decide the hard truth’s better than the easy lie.

I get in the Explorer and drive Daimon’s corpse—which is no longer floating and has sunk to the gravel at the bottom and started to turn white at the edges—over to Carly’s.

“I’m sorry,” I say, holding the bowl out toward her, barely able to get the words out because I’m crying so hard. Over a fish.

Or maybe it isn’t over the fish at all.

And maybe she’s just so grateful that Grammy B’s going to be okay or maybe she’s the greatest friend ever, or maybe it’s a combination of the two. Whatever the reason, Carly wraps her arms around me and we cry together.

And then she forgives me.

THE NIGHT OF THE HALLOWEEN DANCE I PULL ON A PAIR OF black jeans and a black turtleneck. I add a black military-looking vest that I found online, and finish running a brush through my hair just as the doorbell rings.

Dad’s out again. He called a few minutes ago to check on me.

“Yes, my phone’s charged, Dad. Yes, I’ll be in by midnight.” I find it odd that he didn’t ask who I’m going to the dance with or how I’m getting there. It’s like he’s going through the motions of being the concerned parent without actually participating on anything but the most superficial level.

The hope that surged inside me the day I told him about the AA meetings has faded to a dull shade of pale. Last week, when I was vacuuming his office, I found an empty clear glass bottle with blue block letters on the floor under his desk. I picked it up and stood it beside the wastepaper bin. He never said a word about it. Neither did I.

But that night, when I tried to open a conversation with an oblique reference to AA, Dad shut me down like a steel trap. He’s graduated from beer to something stronger. Or maybe he’s been drinking both all along.

The doorbell chimes a second time.

I push aside the negative thoughts.

I choose to focus on the moment, this moment, the first time a boy’s taking me to a dance. And not just any boy. Jackson.

I tear down the stairs to pull open the door. He’s leaning against the porch rail, arms crossed over his chest. He’s dressed all in black, like me, but he’s wearing a V-neck, long-sleeved pullover, and his vest’s bigger and bulkier with these round things on it. Very
Gears of War
.

Two black paintball masks dangle from his fingers. We were going to wear paintball guns as accessories, but that didn’t quite pan out as hoped. Ms. Smith made an endless announcement that made it clear there were to be no weapons of any kind at the dance, not even cardboard cutouts. Definitely not unloaded paintball guns.

So we’re going as weaponless warriors. Which is fine with me. I have my fill of weapons in the game.

Jackson pushes off the rail and walks past me into the house, snagging my belt loop as he passes and dragging me inside. He drops the paintball masks, pushes the door shut, and backs me against it, his arms caging me, his thighs against mine.

“Trick or treat,” he says.

“Treat.” I give him a peck on the cheek, duck under his arm, and lift the nearly empty bowl of mini chocolate bars sitting on the kitchen chair I dragged to the front door. “Happy Halloween.” I hold the bowl out to him.

“I was hoping for something sweeter. Say . . . your lips on mine . . .”

“You’ll have to settle for chocolate. Luka’s waiting. Are we picking him up?”

“He’s meeting us there. He’s picking up Sarah and Amy on his way.” Jackson pokes through the bars and chooses one. “All the peanut-butter ones are gone?”

“I don’t do peanut butter. Too many kids have allergies.”

There’s a crinkle of paper and he downs the candy in a single bite. He tosses the wrapper back in the bowl. I hold out my hand, palm up. With a faint smile, he fishes out the wrapper, deposits it in my hand, and helps himself to another bar.

“Planning to hand out any more candy?”

“I think all the little kids came through earlier.” I reach across him to turn off the outside light. “It’s pretty late for them now.”

“Then I can eat the rest.” He takes another chocolate bar.

I surreptitiously check him out while I put the bowl back on the chair. “I’m a little surprised you’re so into this whole Halloween thing.”

He turns to me and tips his glasses up, his silvery eyes preternaturally bright against his dark, spiky lashes. “You’re into it, so I’m into it.” Leaning in, he whispers against my ear, “I want it to be good for you, Miki.”

I do a fair imitation of Carly’s arched-brow thing. “Behave.”

“Not gonna happen.”

I know. And I kind of like that. And I definitely like the fact that he never pushes too far.

“So what’s with you and the love of Halloween?” he asks.