Chapter Seven Shea
The great irony of Shea Parker’s existence is that she prefers the silence.
If it were up to her, she’d live in it forever.
She’s learned—out of necessity, or else over time—to slot the noises into place.
The brain is a funny thing. It adapts. It attributes meaning to dissonance, makes sense of the clicks and creaks and scrapes.
It forgets what things used to sound like, before the sound went away.
When she was young, there was a clinic in town.
Her parents upended the last of their savings to get her fitted for silicone molds.
It took months after that for the hearing aids to arrive.
In that time, she and her parents subsisted on boiled root vegetables and watery broth.
It felt like a cruel joke, that she had to starve for sound, when she didn’t even want it.
Crueler still that her parents starved with her, when she’d have been perfectly happy in the quiet.
Silence hadn’t been an option. The rest of the world wasn’t as hospitable as home.
No one at school spoke with their hands.
No one in town knew what to do with her.
As she grew, so did the stakes, until her looming graduation began to feel like an expiration date.
There was no place in Little Hill for the childless, the unemployed, and the unenlisted.
Those who ate up resources without giving something back tended to disappear.
They became just another face on a poster. Missing. Lost. Gone.
Useless.
For a long time, her parents did whatever they could to shield her from the truth.
When the clinic shut its doors, her father left town in search of batteries.
He went to the city to pawn what he could—his father’s favorite watch, his mother’s wedding ring.
Carving up the remains of his family. Shea paid him back for his sacrifice with tantrums. Slammed doors and angry tears, her hearing aids off and her eyes shut. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!
Sometimes, when he first left, she thought maybe he’d done so because he was sick of bleeding himself dry for her sake. She thought maybe if she’d been more grateful, more tolerably behaved, he’d have stayed.
That maybe if she hadn’t squandered everything he’d worked for, he wouldn’t be gone.
She bleeds herself dry now.
She microdoses silence in the space between.
If she Turns, the rest of the world will be at her mercy. She won’t be forced to capitulate to its whims. She won’t have to play by its rules—to cut herself down to size. She won’t have to empty out her veins over and over for a life she never even wanted.
She spends the day thinking it over, shut away in a room with a view of the mountain. There’s a little balcony on the other side of the glass, the prim white railing sponged in moss. The bed is broad and plush and piled in pillows. The walls are plaid, pastoral and charming.
Perhaps most surprisingly, the room comes with an attached bath. It’s small and neat, containing a single, deep tub and a pedestal sink. An old painting of Mercy Mountain hangs on the wall, slopes demarcated in colored runs. Several clean, dry towels have been left atop the toilet seat.
She can’t remember the last time someone left towels out for her.
It makes her think of her mother—of being wrapped up after a bath, her fingers pruning.
She used to wriggle and writhe and gnash her teeth whenever her mother brushed her hair.
You’re a great wild thing , her mother would laugh, combing loose the tangles one by one, and so you have great wild hair.
The memory has ground sharp, over the years. It hurts to try to hold it.
By the time the red haze of a dusk settles over the mountain, she’s made up her mind. When she tugs open the door to track down Lys, it’s to find Asher standing on the other side, his fist poised to knock. For several seconds, they blink at each other in surprise.
Finally, he asks, “Can I come in?”
The question jars her into action. She shuts the door so hard she feels it in her teeth.
“Parker, come on” drifts Asher’s voice through the wood. “Open the door.”
She doesn’t.
“Look,” he says, muffled, “I know you’re upset—”
She wrenches the door wide with a vehemence that ruffles her skirt. He stands with both hands braced against the frame, his left eye swollen shut.
“Hi.”
“Upset?”
He flinches. “Well—”
“You think I’m upset ?”
“You seem upset.”
“You tried to unload a shotgun into my mom.”
Gingerly, he says, “I think you and I can both agree that there were extenuating circumstances.”
“You told Lys about her. That she’s sick.”
“I did. I did do that, and I’m sorry.” He searches her face, his own crumpling when he finds only steely resolve. “Give me a little grace here, Parker. I’m just trying to find Ellie.”
“I want to find Ellie, too,” she snaps. “You have no idea—I’d do anything to get her back. But not like this. You cornered me last night. You threatened me.”
“If we’re going to fight, let’s do it in the room, at least.”
“I don’t want to fight. I want you to leave me alone.”
He cuts her a plaintive look. “I can’t do that.”
“You can. I’ll help.”
She moves to slam the door in his face again, but this time he anticipates. He shoves it back open with ease, bringing them face-to-face in the newly fallen dusk.
“Five minutes,” he says. “That’s all I need.”
“I’ll give you two.”
“Four.”
“Three.”
“Done.” He steps inside and lets the door fall shut behind him with a click. She scuttles back several steps, out of arm’s reach. It’s for his safety, not hers. She’s furious enough to strike at him.
“Where’s Tristan? He was supposed to be standing guard.”
“I sent him away.”
“How?”
“What do you mean, how? I’ve known Choi since he was eating crayons in preschool. I told him to beat it for a few minutes, and he did.”
She glowers up at him. “Get him back.”
“I still have three minutes.”
“It’s two now,” she says. “Not that it matters. There’s seven days until we leave for the Flatwood. Until then, I have nothing to say to you.”
“You have every right to be mad,” he tells her. “I didn’t come here to talk you into forgiving me. I came to tell you that Lysander is posting a watch on your house. I asked if I could go with the first patrol.”
Her anger deepens. “I hope he told you no.”
“I’m heading out as soon as we’re done here,” he says, and flinches back from the expression on her face.
“Look, I think it’s safe to say that neither of us could predict how things would play out last night.
I came to Mercy Ridge with a Hail Mary, and I had no idea you’d get swept up in it with me.
So, as a peace offering, I told Lysander I’d go get your things.
I came by to ask if there was anything you’d like me to grab while I’m there. ”
“I don’t want you going through my stuff.”
Through the red haze of her anger, she is starkly aware of how mortifying it would be to have Asher Thorley poking through her belongings.
Her brain fires off a series of scenarios, each one worse than the one before: Asher rifling through her underwear drawer.
Asher flipping through her math notebooks and finding entire pages doodled with his name.
Or—perhaps worst of all—Asher uncovering her cookie tin stuffed with unsent letters, every last one addressed to his garrison.
Promises made and then broken, before they ever saw the light of day.
“Are you sure?” he asks. “What about your rabbit?”
Her stomach flips at the casual mention of her old stuffed rabbit. “Don’t touch Bugs.”
“You still sleep with him?”
The memory is a whip, quick and stinging.
She’s fifteen years old again, spending the night at the Thorley house.
Camellia and Poppy were fast asleep upstairs, but she’d tossed and turned for hours, sick with jealousy over the fact that Asher had gone out riding with Alameda Morales.
It was after midnight, and he still hadn’t come home.
Restless, she’d tiptoed downstairs for a glass of water, her sleep shorts sticking to her skin.
She’d stumbled upon Asher sneaking in through the open window, his neck dark with several hickeys.
They’d frozen at the sight of each other, her with Bugs held before her like a shield and him with one foot in the wide farmhouse sink.
How about you don’t tell my parents you saw me , he’d finally whispered, and I won’t tell anyone at school you still sleep with a stuffy?
“That’s none of your business,” she says now.
He grins. “So, then yes.”
“Your three minutes are up.” It comes out abruptly.
Compliant, he pries open the door, watching her too keenly as he does. She studies a spot on the wall and waits for him to leave. He doesn’t. He lingers.
“Are we still friends?”
Her chest gives an awful pinch. “Were we ever?”
“No,” he admits, though now he sounds careful. “That’s not the word I’d pick.”
Her eyes jolt to his, surprised. His stare is honey dark. Lit by a silver wedge of moonlight, he looks almost regretful.
“I’ll grab Bugs,” he says, and pulls the door shut before she can argue.
When he’s gone, she waits just long enough for him to be out of sight before heading out after him, her residual anger driving her at a full tilt. She finds Tristan standing outside as if he’d never left.
“Thanks for nothing,” she bites at him, and takes off down the hall.
He falls in after her, looking penitent. “Where are we going?”
“To talk to Lys.”
···
She arrives outside Lys’s bedroom to find it shut. A hazy yellow light leaks out from the gap beneath. She shoves inside without bothering to knock, her nerves a hard knot in her belly.
“If the plan is to Turn me, then let’s get it over with— Oh .”
It isn’t Lys inside the room at all. It’s a woman, her raven-dark hair curtaining a face gone ropy with scarring. She’s seated by the unlit hearth, contemplating a chessboard. Reaching for a white pawn, she smiles up at Shea.
“Do you play?”