Thicker Than Water (3 page)

Visiting hours are till nine,
she reminded herself as she strode into the ceramics classroom and found her spot at the long table.

“Hey, want to grab some fries after this?” Virgil was standing next to her, scraping tool tucked behind a pierced ear.

Kia had been surprised when Virgil showed up in the first ceramics class. Everyone in the art program pretty much had to take some after-school elective, so he had to be
somewhere.
Still ... ceramics?

He was trying to invent the perfect coffee mug. So far, none had made it into the kiln.

“Huh?” Kia said. “Did you say something about being fried?”

“Eat food. Post this.”

“Oh. Yeah, sure.”

Why did she say that? She already had more plans than she could fit after school.

Kia turned back to her vase. It was small, meant to hold a single flower. She was having trouble with the neck.

Now she really needed to re-schedule the hospital visit. She dipped her fingers into a bowl of water and ran them over the clay.
Mom will understand,
she thought. She'd made some comment yesterday about Kia spent too much time at the hospital anyway. Kia worked the neck, trying to make it more pliable.

Class over, and Virgil and Kia left the building. The art side of the building always had a faint mist of paint and plaster smells, and Virgil lit up a cigarette as soon as they stepped outside. Kia's nose wrinkled in reaction to all the competing smells.

“Nikko's?” Virgil asked. “Or Diner?”

Nikko's was the pizza place across the street. The diner was a few blocks away.

“I don't know,” Kia said. “Can I borrow your cell first, though? I forgot mine, and I just have to make a quick call.”

“Sure.” Virgil unclipped his much-adored phone from his belt loop and handed it over. His eyes stayed glued to the little silver object.

“I promise I won't hurt it,” Kia said.

Virgil blushed, proving that a pale goth complexion wasn't necessarily a good thing. No camouflage. No protective coloring.

She punched the numbers for her mom's hospital room. It only rang once before her mother answered. “Hello?”

Kia winced. Did her mother pick up so fast because she was sitting there waiting?

“It's me. Listen, uh, I think I'm not going to be able to come by today,” Kia said. She tugged at the hair at the nape of her neck.

“Oh, that's okay, honey,” her mom said.

Off the hook!
At the burst of elation Kia felt immediately guilty.

“Are you sure?” Kia asked. “I mean, I actually could come if you want me to. It's just there's some stuff....”

“No, really. Go do what you want to do. It's too nice a day to be cooped up in here. Unless you're hooked up to an IV and they won't let you out.”

“Uh, yeah.” Kia wasn't ever sure how to take what Dad called her mom's “gallows humor.”

“Will you ...” Her mother hesitated for a minute. “Will you be around this weekend?”

Kia's face flushed. She never should have canceled.

“Of course,” Kia assured her mother too loudly. She felt Virgil's surveillance change. She could tell he had become focused on more than just his precious and vulnerable cell phone. “I can even come now if—”

“No, no, tomorrow will be fine. Or Sunday. Whenever works for you.”

“Tomorrow,” Kia promised. They clicked off.

“One more?” Kia asked Virgil. His head was cocked and he just nodded.

“Hey, Dad,” Kia said when her father answered the phone. “I'm going to hang out with Aaron and Carol tonight.”

“That's good since I'll be out somewhat late myself. Are you staying over at Carol's?”

“I don't know.” Kia didn't want to make it easy for her dad by staying out all night. On the other hand, if she went home, she might slip again. Staying at Carol's would be safer. “I'll let you know.” There. Nice and ambiguous. Now he couldn't bring back some babe in case Kia walked in, but if she didn't sleep at home, he'd wish he had. A two-pronged psych-out.

She clicked off again and handed the phone back to Virgil.

“Thanks.”

“Yeah. So did you decide? Pizza or fries?”

“I don't care. I just want a soda anyway.”

“Pizza. Why hunt and gather when you can just fall into a plastic chair?”

They crossed the street and were assaulted by an overpowering garlic smell wafting through the small, hot space.

“Good thing we're not vampires,” Virgil joked. “We'd have just been expelled forcibly.”

They slid into a booth with plastic orange cushions. “Seriously? No pizza?” Virgil looked at her. “My treat.”

“Did you just come into an inheritance?” Virgil was notoriously cheap. He never offered to spend money on anyone. In fact, she should offer to pay for her phone charges. He kept track of stuff like that. He even charged her for the blank CDs when he burned anything for her—even though she never asked him to give her music.

Virgil shrugged. “Well, do you?”

“Uh, yeah, sure. A plain slice and a Diet Coke.”

Virgil went up to the counter while Kia defended their booth, knowing if she vacated the table, she'd lose their spot as more kids piled in. She watched Virgil, frowning slightly, trying to figure out what was going on. Was this a date? Was that how you could tell, when the guy suddenly offered to treat?

Kia had made out with some guys, and last summer at art camp she had slept with one of the other junior counselors she'd sort of been going out with. But none of that seemed to help her figure out guys any more than when she had been a virgin.

At the counter, Virgil held up a paper plate and mimed shaking spices onto it. Kia shook her head no. He loaded up his slice with extra garlic and red pepper flakes.

Kia narrowed her eyes at his pepperoni, assessing. If this really was a date, he probably would have been more worried about garlic breath. She leaned back against the booth and drummed the table with her fingertips.

He sat opposite her and slid the plain pizza slice in front of her. She unwrapped a straw and swirled it around in the Diet Coke, watching the ice cubes dance.

“So it must be really weird,” he said.

“What?” Kia took a sip of the soda.

“You know, with your mom.”

Kia's ears felt cold. She stared at the deep maroon lipstick on the tip of her straw. He wasn't really going to talk about
that,
was he?

She looked him straight in the eye. “What about my mom?” she asked.
I dare you,
she thought.

“Well, you know. Being sick.”

“It's not
weird;
people get sick every day. There's nothing at all unusual about it.”

“I just meant—”

“What's weird is how other people act about it.”

Now Kia looked down. But her face was still neutral. It was Virgil's that was showing too much. So much that Kia didn't want to see. She'd stung him and it was hard to watch his struggle to find how to respond.

“I don't mean to be acting weird.” Virgil's voice was softer than Kia had expected. “That's the point. Why I mentioned it. So you could tell me how to not act weird.”

Kia snorted. “How much time you got? That's a looong list. Lots of making over to do. For starters, lose the notebook where you write down what people owe you.”

“Kia, look.” Now he sounded annoyed. “My parents are budget freaks and I have to show them
on paper
where I'm spending my money. Okay? Because they're afraid I'm spending money on drugs. That's the deal with
my
parents. But that doesn't tell me about the deal with yours. I have no idea what it would be like to have a mom who's dying. Which makes it hard to know the right things to say.”

Kia's eyes narrowed to slits. “Start by getting your facts straight, asshole. My mother is not dying.”

She banged her hands down on the table and stood up, accidentally knocking her pizza slice onto the floor. Facedown, of course. At least she missed her backpack and boots. She stepped over the mess and slammed out the door.

She immediately turned several corners so that if Virgil in some misguided attempt to make things better followed her, he wouldn't be able to. She hurried toward the park and didn't slow her pace till she hit the cover of the Tavern on the Green restaurant just inside the park entrance.

That total jerk! I can't believe
I thought this was a date! It was pity pizza.
Kia strode deeper into the park, pausing to catch her breath by the snack bar.

Kia banged the brick wall with one thick-booted foot over and over. How dare he say that? He didn't know.

She stopped kicking. That's what they all thought. That's why she was avoided. Why Marni and the others weren't her friends anymore. No one could deal.

But her mom was going to get better. That's what no one seemed to get. Cancer wasn't always a death sentence. Her mom had beat it before, right? Other people got cured. Went into remission. Her mother wasn't going to die. Not possible.

Kia crouched down and leaned against the bricks.
Stare into space and don't see anything,
she instructed herself.
Soft lines, no hard edges. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

The smell of grilling meat distracted her, made her hungry.

She stood up and bought herself a hot dog. Fries too. She ate as she walked, watching dog walkers and Frisbee players, moms with kids, dads with kids, and kids with kids. She was supposed to meet Aaron and Carol on the Great Lawn, so she headed in that direction.

She was glad now that she'd decided to go to this witch thing, even if it ended up being lame. She needed a way to get that whole scene with Virgil out of her head.

Don't think about that,
she told herself.
Think about ... the rhythm of your feet. Think of every shade that blue can be.

Kia arrived at the top of the stairs leading down to Bethesda Fountain. It always struck her as overly picturesque, fitting too well in its landscape. She liked ragged views. This was too
designed.
She could imagine someone standing in this spot to determine the position of the angel at the top so that it would be perfectly framed by distant foliage.

Kia avoided getting in the way of people taking pictures as she walked down the broad staircase to the plaza around the fountain, finally arriving at what she thought was the meeting place. Off to the edge of the lawn were three adults in long flowing caftan-type gear. One had a drum. As she watched, another taped a copy of the flyer Aaron had shown them to a nearby tree.

Kia sat on a bench to wait for her friends, staring into space.

What was she doing there? Waiting for some sort of supernatural intervention? Like that could happen.

Keep an open mind,
Kia scolded herself. Life did have a way of surprising you. She just hoped her next surprise was a good one.

K
ia stood flanked between Carol and Aaron. There was no way she was going to hold hands with any of these freaks—and she didn't need tarot cards to know that hand-holding was going to come up.

She forced herself to look around the circle again to find something—anything—positive. For some reason, Aaron was into this, and she loved Aaron, so she needed to give it a chance.

Carol was talking to the woman on the other side of her, discussing jewelry. The woman was tall and thin, wearing a bright orange turban.
She looks okay,
Kia thought, working hard to lose her judgmental stance.

About twenty people had gathered by now. Mostly women, older than Kia, but there were men scattered too. Dudes with beards and thinning hair that they wore long in back in pony-tails. The few kids Kia's age thankfully didn't go to their school. Kia did not want to be identified as one of these wacky Wiccans.

Not that she would be. Kia looked down at her outfit and then back around the group. Not much black in this crowd.

Aaron took Kia's hand and twisted it so that their thumbs pointed across the circle. “Check him out,” he murmured. “My future husband.”

Kia followed Aaron's gaze across the circle. Her friend's future husband was slight, with dark floppy curls that brushed his shoulders. He wore a blue turtleneck, faded jeans, and scuffed sneakers. His small nose and blue eyes, set wide apart, made Kia think of an elf. Not her type, but certainly cute—and definitely high school age.

Probably out of Aaron's league,
Kia thought with a pang. At the moment, anyway. Aaron's body just needed to catch up with his height, and then when his skin cleared up, he'd be back to being a total cutie.

“I'd learn to cook for a boy like that,” Aaron crooned.

“Aren't we supposed to be communing with the divine?” Kia teased. “Not cruising.”

“Okay, so what's my game plan?” he said, ignoring Kia's comment, his words coming out rapid-fire. “You think I can get him to talk to me? Or maybe I shouldn't go that route—don't want to scare him off by actually meeting me. Should I play mysterious? Warm? Friendly? Cool?”

Kia couldn't have interrupted Aaron's stream of anxiety if she had tried, but the woman who seemed to be in charge managed. She stepped into the center of the circle and hit a drum. She was tall, with short brown hair, and looked about forty. She struck the drum again, and a hush settled over the circle.