Chapter 37 Evasive Maneuvers
EVASIVE MANEUVERS
ALICE
Itoss and turn all night, falling out of nightmares and into memories.
Ori is at the center of every one of them.
In some macabre rendition of our training, my subconscious has me stab him with a blade straight through his chest. He reassures me he’s fine, but red pools between his teeth and drips from his lips as he coughs.
I scream. The dream ends. Then it repeats, slower, each time, until it doesn’t.
Maybe I wake up, turn over in a haze, and the sensation of fresh pillow on my cheek resets my slumber. Because suddenly, we’re kids again, and I know it’s a memory.
I’m gripping his hand tightly, pulling him to the water of the Lake in the Sky. Ori fights the entire way, digging his heels into the clouds before the shallows.
“Alice, it’s cold.”
“Don’t be a coward,” I urge, pulling him farther into the lake. “Come on.”
I wince at how freezing the water is on my toes, but I know that once it’s up to our chests, our bodies will get used to it.
It’s like playing tug of war with Ori’s hand, though; we go back and forth, one step into the water, one step out. I huff, frustrated with his stupid frown and lack of trust, and let go. Ori stumbles, falling to his butt.
“What the heck, Alice!”
My hands find my bathing-suit clad hips, pressing into the ruffles that line the sides. “If I get eaten by a sea monster out there, then it’s your fault.”
I turn, stomping into the chilly lake. My arms wrap around my middle as the water soaks through my bathing suit and I hurry to the deeper waters. The faster I’m fully submerged, the faster I can rid myself of the sensation of the stretchy fabric suctioning to my skin.
“There are no sea monsters in a lake. It’d be a lake monster that eats you!” Ori yells.
“I’d be fish food either way, dummy!” I call over my shoulder.
I lift my feet off the ground and bob with the water, treading past where the waves break. Splashing sounds behind me, and I swim in a circle to catch Ori’s head surface a few feet away.
The scowl on his face is normal; what’s not is how deep it cuts into his cheeks. It’s been doing that all week.
“You’ve been pouty all morning,” I say.
“No, I haven’t,” Ori says, too quick.
“Yes, you have. More than usual. Except now this is your usual.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” he says, dipping under the water. When Ori resurfaces, he shakes his wavy black hair out, spraying lake water all over me.
“Rude,” I say, splashing him back.
“You’re the one who wanted me out here,” Ori snaps. He licks his lips, grimacing before spitting into the lake. “So salty. Ugh.”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, well, that doesn’t mean I want you to spray water on me like a dog.”
We swim in silence for a minute, until I finally gain the courage to ask what I really wanted to come out here for. It’s more private, and since the others have good hearing, the waves help to block us out.
“Why are you sad?” I ask, sinking partway under the water and blowing nervous bubbles.
Ori looks away, out at the clear blue horizon that meets the lake. “Do you want me to lie or do you want me to tell you the truth?”
My lips rise out of the water. “The lie first. Then the truth.”
Ori chuckles, though the laugh is short-lived. “You’re weird.”
I shrug, and a ripple flows from me to him. His hand breaks it, gliding though the water like a shark’s fin.
“Everyone here has a best friend. Enzo has Maven, even though she’s weird,” Ori says.
“Weirder than me?”
“You’re… cool weird. She’s mean weird.” Ori sinks deeper in the water; it laps at the bottom of his chin. “Harley has Jessa. The other kids in town have paired up too. And I’m just there. Even though we all grew up together.”
I hum. “That’s an easy problem to fix.”
“How?”
“You can have me, duh,” I say, holding both hands above water to show a six count. “That makes three even pairs of two for a total of six.”
Ori’s lips purse, as if he can’t believe me. “Really?”
“Mhm. Are you bad at math or something?” I swim a circle around Ori, who treads in place. “I don’t have a best friend back home, so the job is open.”
“Being a best friend isn’t a job. Being a baker is a job,” he says. “Being an Heir is a job.”
I scrunch my nose. “You’re supposed to always be there for them.
You have to hang out with them regularly and sometimes have sleepovers.
You have to compliment them, even if you don’t like their new haircut.
And you have to ask them why they’re sad when they look sad.
There’s a lot you have to do as a best friend.
I know because I saw it at school and took notes, just in case I got one. Tell me that doesn’t sound like a job.”
“Oh,” Ori says, brows furrowing. He stares down at the water again, studying his pale hands as he glides them under the rippling surface. “Okay, that makes sense.”
“Will that make you happy again?” I ask, swimming closer.
“What?” he says, looking up.
“Will me being your best friend make you happy?”
“I don’t know,” he says. Then quieter, “Probably.”
“Okay,” I chirp. “You’re already my Heir. Might as well add best friend to the list.” I purse my lips, hiding my conniving smile. “Also,” I drawl, “best friends share food. And I want some of those sour gumdrops you snuck from the pantry when we’re done swimming.”
“That seems reasonable,” Ori says, utterly serious.
“But I like the purple ones the best, so is it okay if I only give you the red ones—” Ori cuts himself off, taking in my face, which convulses with silent laughter.
He must realize I’m pulling his leg, because I’m suddenly doused in a wave of water.
I scream, but it’s all giggles as I dive into the lake to escape Ori’s wrath. I pop back up closer to shore, and he starts swimming towards me.
“Alice!” he calls out.
“First one back gets the purple gumdrops!” I yell, maniacally.
I wake up with a jolt.
My heart races like it did twenty years ago, as if I was chased through the clear blue waters of a lake that defies all laws of physics by a boy who could turn into a dragon.
It would be a great dream to tell people, if it was only a dream.
I glance at the sleeping forms at my side; last night Jessa and Harley had their date night but asked me to come over after. I’d slipped into their bed well after dark with paint-stained fingers, having worked all night to finish the second to last piece for the gallery.
It’s of Ori and I—of me tying a scrap of cloth around his wound.
Ori’s a riddle; I think that’s why I keep poking him. 90 percent of the time he reacts to me with a variation of annoyance, but the other 10 percent he acts sweet, on the verge of caring. It makes me want to solve him. I love a good puzzle.
At least I used to. I stopped doing them around the same time I stopped painting.
I can already tell by my erratic pulse that I’m not going to fall back asleep, so I slip from the bed, pad into their kitchen, and grab my phone from its charger on the counter. It’s an ungodly hour, so early that it won’t be time to train with Ori anytime soon.
I could wait for him. Or, better yet, I could call him on his bluff and go home, make him come knock on my door to get me for our session. And then I could make him wait under the guise of not hearing him banging on the front door while I’m all the way up in my bedroom.
My head shakes as I perch on one of the island stools.
Nah, that would be overkill.
I’ve come to enjoy our early morning banter, in a strange twist of fate.
I glance at my phone again. August tenth. A little more than two weeks until my birthday—our birthday—and my gallery deadline.
What if I don’t finish piece 100?
Static fills my ears. It’s a switch flipping. A bulb blowing out as the anxiety rolls in.
Sometimes it’s as simple as one brief thought to send you into a spiral of your own making.
What if I forget his face before I can immortalize it in paint?
It’s going to be a bad morning.
I pitch forward off the kitchen stool, stumbling as I climb back up the stairs to pull on the shorts, T-shirt, and sneakers I arrived in.
My hands shake as I try to tie the laces, and I give up, shoving the strings down the side of my sneakers.
The aglets poke against my socked foot, but I push through the annoying sensation as I leave their house.
It’s not one of those bad mornings. The ones that are characterized by stagnancy and blank stares, by the smell of stale bedsheets and dirty dishes stacked in the sink, or by cyclical thoughts and hours that pass like seconds.
No, this is one of the bad mornings where you’re overcome with the need to run. To flee. To leave everything behind. To remake yourself and pretend to not be who you are anymore—because it’s too much to bear all by yourself.
I can sell my Nana’s house, and my car. I can change my name and get a new ID. I can cut my hair off, chemically straighten it, dye it a different color, just so I don’t have to think of how he’d twirl a curl around his tanned finger.
I can escape all these things that remind me of him, but if the past two years have taught me anything, it’s that I can’t escape my grief.
It’s in my shadow, and it follows me everywhere. Even at night, it’s still there, I just can’t see it clearly.
The need and the want and the yearning hit me, twisting painfully in my gut.
I need air. I need clarity.
I yank open their front door and step into—