Chapter 26 #4
Roger looks briefly surprised, then laughs. “Yup. That’s what you really think. And you’re not wrong, but the neighbors can’t always see the house when we don’t want them to, and there are ways around arson when you need to look for them. And we don’t have to look at the house when we’re inside.”
“Speak for yourself,” says Dodger, gesturing to the garden that takes up most of the front yard. It’s filled with out-of-season fruits and flowers, and while they’re as much a riot of color as the house is, they’re not nearly as jarring to look at. “I can’t avoid it.”
“We all have our penance to pay,” says Erin, and pulls a set of keys out of her pocket before loping down the porch steps, taking them two at a time, like a predator beginning the lazy pursuit of some small, unwitting prey animal.
“I’ll bring the van around. You lot come and meet me on the sidewalk. ”
Then she’s gone, circling the porch to head down the side of the house. Lilianne shoots Smita a bemused look.
“The garage is behind the main house,” she says, by way of explanation. “It’s detached. There’s a little workshop back there, but mostly we just use it for the cars.”
“Which should be singular, since there’s only one car,” says Dodger. “We also have a van, which seats eight, and will get us where we need to go.”
“There used to be two cars,” says Smita.
“Yes, and persistence of forward continuity means the old car doesn’t matter anymore,” says Dodger. She descends the stairs, head swiveling to watch Lilianne as she does. “We only need to care about the things that are still in front of us.”
Artemis and Kelpie trail down after her, followed by Roger and Judy, until Lilianne and Smita are alone on the porch.
Lilianne sighs and runs her hands back through her hair, tugging a little as she does.
The dull almost-pain centers her, returns her to the shape of her own skin, in a way that nothing else ever seems to manage.
When she lowers her hands, Smita is watching her, clearly anxious.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
Smita shakes her head. “I know this may not sound right, considering everything else that’s going on, but we don’t have new people show up here very often.
The ones who do come tend to stick around, because there’s a certain level of absolute weirdness that almost has to be achieved before you make it past the door, but …
mostly when I make friends I don’t already live with, they don’t last long.
I still don’t know whether you and I are going to be friends, or whether this is going to be a short-lived association to get us past this whole thing with the lab, but I’m hoping you’ll be able to stick around. Is that weird?”
“No,” says Lilianne. “God, this was so much easier when we were kids. You just walked up to another kid on the playground, showed them your toy truck, and then you were besties going forward.”
“For you, maybe,” says Smita, holding up her forearm to show the shade of her skin.
“It was a little harder for me, when all the kids I didn’t already know were white.
They were usually willing to play, but you never knew whose parents were going to come rushing over shouting about how they didn’t know if I was clean, I probably smelled like curry, I probably had head lice.
Those kids learned racism from their parents in the sandbox, and they carried it with them as we all went to school. ”
“That sounds awful,” says Lilianne. “I would have played with your truck.”
“I bet you would,” says Smita, and she smiles, and there’s nothing Lilianne wouldn’t do for that smile. That smile is a promise and a prayer and she would follow it to the ends of the earth.
Which is what she’s about to do.
A surprisingly mundane-looking van pulls up in front of the house, painted filing-cabinet gray, the side door already sliding open as Erin leans out the driver’s-side window, beckoning the group forward.
“Shotgun,” says Dodger, as she turns and hurries toward the van, bumping the garden gate open with her hip.
Artemis is close behind her, rolling her eyes as she catches the swinging gate and stops it from closing.
The others follow, one after the other, until Smita and Lilianne are the only ones left, still standing on the porch.
“Are you assholes coming?” calls Erin.
“Well. Are we assholes going?” asks Smita, turning to offer Lilianne her hand.
Lilianne lays her fingers across Smita’s palm, and suppresses the thrill that runs through her when Smita grips them tight. Together they walk down the porch stairs and across the yard to the waiting van.
The interior is meticulously clean. Not unreasonable for a vehicle belonging to the living incarnation of order.
The layout of the seats—two in the front, three each in the middle and back—means they have to split up, and Lilianne winds up sitting next to Judy at the very back of the van, while Smita joins Kelpie and Artemis in the middle.
Judy shoots Lilianne a sympathetic smile.
Roger, meanwhile, leans forward so he can look around his girlfriend to Lilianne.
“I know this is all a lot,” he says. “But we really do appreciate you reminding us that we need to be worried about this lab. I guess it was easier just to pretend the whole thing had disappeared when the alchemists left, and that was a mistake.”
“Yeah, it was,” agrees Lilianne. “You’re really going to let me go when this is all over?”
“We’re not holding you captive,” says Roger. “We just can’t let you leave until it’s been resolved. For your own safety as much as anything else. Those eti?inen got a taste of you. Until we know they’ve been neutralized, letting you go off on your own would be the same as feeding you to them.”
“No one is feeding anyone to anything,” says Smita firmly.
“Belts,” says Erin, and pulls away from the curb without waiting to see if her command has been obeyed.
She’s an aggressive driver, but her turns are crisp and precise, and Lilianne knows without asking that she’s obeying every law of the road, no matter how obscure or seemingly irrelevant.
If anyone pulls them over, Erin will probably wind up writing them a ticket.
It’s a humorous thought, but somehow it doesn’t make her laugh, or even crack a smile. Lilianne leans back in her seat, belt tight across her middle, and watches the streets roll by outside the windows. Erin will get them there safely.
That may be the last safety any of them will see anytime soon.