Chapter 24 Eliana
ELIANA
counter service /?koun(t)?r ?s?rv?s/: noun
The adrenaline dump is real. We all stumble back into the apartment in utter exhaustion. Zeke locks the door behind us. I hear the deadbolt slide, then the chain, then what sounds like him dragging something heavy in front of it. A chair, maybe. Or the coffee table. Possibly an elephant.
“Paranoid much?” Yasmin asks.
“After tonight?” he replies. “Absolutely fucking yes.”
I sink onto the couch. My legs are finally giving out after carrying me at full speed through a building I couldn’t see, up stairs I didn’t have time to count, past a guard I had to clock in the brain with nothing but a well-placed guess, and then back down a fire escape that was positively crawling with tetanus.
Excalibur falls from my grip and onto the floor beside me.
My hands are shaking so badly I couldn’t grip him again if I tried.
Sage hasn’t said a word since we got in the car. I can hear him sighing as Bastian settles him somewhere nearby. The springs of an armchair groan under his weight.
“You okay?” Bastian asks his brother.
Sage doesn’t answer.
His cold shoulder silent treatment gets more and more awkward, more and more suffocating, until finally, Yasmin clears her throat. “I’m making tea. Anyone who doesn’t want some… is getting some anyway.”
She slips away into the kitchen. As she gets to work, the clink of mugs and the hiss of the electric kettle fill a weary silence that none of us seem capable of breaking. I lean my head back against the couch cushions and focus on breathing.
In through the nose, out through the mouth. That’s how it’s done.
“Breathing” was the first thing that Helen ever taught me.
I was skeptical about that choice of lesson plan, to say the least. It felt kind of like starting the first day of quantum physics class by reviewing how to add and subtract.
But she swore up and down that I’d be surprised how easy it is to forget to breathe when you’re trying to navigate a world you can no longer see.
“Breathing is how we tell our bodies we’re safe. You’re safe here, Eliana. So breathe.”
To my credit, I got that down-pat pretty quickly. And for a while now, I’ve been feeling smug about it. Breathing? Ha! That’s child’s play. I can literally do it with my eyes closed. It’s rescuing a hostage that’s the real tricky business.
But I am safe here. And so is Yas, and Bastian, and Zeke, and, thank God, Sage, too. We’re all safe. So I can breathe.
A minute or two later, Yasmin presses a warm mug into my hands. It’s chamomile, from the smell of it. I wrap my fingers around the ceramic and let the heat seep into my bones.
“So,” Bastian says in a way that draws the attention of everyone in the room. “Here’s what happens next.”
He stops pacing. We all hold our breath.
“Sage leaves Chicago tonight,” he declares. “With Eliana and Yasmin.”
That goes over like a wet fart.
Yas is the first to blurt out. “Who do you think you’re—”
I add, “On what planet were you elected dic—”
Zeke: “Bro, that seems a bit—”
But it’s Sage whose voice rises above the racket. “Fucking excuse me?” he roars. “Like hell I will! You don’t get to decide my life.”
“This isn’t a negotiation.” Bastian’s pacing resumes.
“Aleksei touches down in Chicago in thirty-six hours. Maybe sooner, depending on how fast he hears about everything that’s happened.
And once he does, he’s going to tear this city apart looking for you.
All three of you need to be somewhere he can’t reach. ”
“And where exactly is that?” I scoff.
Bastian hesitates before answering, “… I’m working on it.”
“You’re working on it?” Yasmin sounds incredulous. “That’s your plan? Ship us off to parts unknown while you stay here and get yourself actually killed this time? I think you maybe oughta go back to ‘work,’ bud.”
He doesn’t answer, which is answer enough.
“Bastian—” I start.
“I said no.” He interrupts me in a growl that makes goosebumps rise on my arms. “You don’t get a vote. None of you do. This isn’t a fucking democracy, and I’m not asking for your input. I’m telling you what the fuck is going to happen.”
“You can’t just—”
“I can. I will. And if any of you think for one second that your feelings on the matter outweigh my responsibility of keeping you alive, you’re welcome to walk out that door and take your chances with Aleksei’s men.
” His footsteps resume. “But you won’t. Because you’re not stupid.
You’re just scared, and scared people say stupid things. ”
Sage lets loose a sarcastic laugh. “You’re such a fucking asshole.”
“Yes,” Bastian agrees without hesitation, “I am. And that asshole is the only thing standing between you and a shallow grave. So I don’t give a damn if you like it or not—what I say goes.”
I hear thumps and the jangle of keys. “In the meantime,” he continues, “Zeke and I are going to go get supplies. We need cash, food, a new wheelchair for Sage, shit like that. You three are to stay here—let me repeat: stay fucking here—and when I get back, I’ll have instructions for how we get you out of the city. Zeke, let’s go.”
He doesn’t stick around to field any follow-up questions. He and Zeke slide the furniture away from the door, slip out, and shut it behind them.
Once Yasmin throws the lock back and repositions the elephant barricade, we all exhale. I look at Yas, who looks at Sage, who looks at me.
“Well,” Yas announces, “that was enough excitement for, oh, I dunno, the rest of my natural life. If you need me, you can find me taking a well-deserved bubble bath.” With that, she sets off down the hallway, muttering something under her breath that I’m guessing are not rave reviews of Bastian’s leadership style.
That leaves Sage and me sitting in the room, stewing in an uneasy silence that neither of us really deserve.
The only sound I can really make out is a wheezy, angry pattern of breathing from Sage.
He sounds like a leaky radiator. It’s like the in-out clicking of Bastian’s pen yesterday, but even though that was laced with despair and frustration, it had a little bit of hope in it, too. A maybe with every click.
Sage’s breathing, though, sounds utterly hopeless.
I set my tea down on the coffee table and push myself up from the couch. My knees protest. They’re going to be bruised for days after that less-than-graceful fire escape landing, but I ignore them and make my way toward the armchair where Sage is sitting.
“Mind if I join you?”
He doesn’t answer, but I just take that as permission. I lower myself onto the floor at his feet. Close enough.
“You can say it, you know,” I tell him. “Whatever you’re thinking. I won’t tell Bastian.”
He keeps up the rhythm of his angry breathing and doesn’t respond.
“I’m mad at him, too, you know,” I continue. “He’s done a lot of fucked-up shit lately that hurt me in ways I’m just sort of starting to wrap my head around. So you’re not alone in being hurt. In fact, you’re in good company. We should start a club. Make t-shirts.”
I’m going for laughter, since someone once told me it’s the best medicine, but Sage doesn’t seem interested in what this doctor is ordering. He just keeps wheezing in silent fury.
It can’t be good for him to bottle it all up like that. I remember being a teenager, so enraged at my mom and the world and all the Dereks who lived in it. When you’re his age, the feelings are just so big. They’ll explode and blow you to bits if you’re not careful, if you don’t find outlets.
I won’t let that happen to him.
Hesitantly, I reach out and touch his hand where it’s lying on the armrest. “You’re not alone, Sage,” I repeat. “I’m right here with you. So if you want to say it—say anything, really—I’m here. I won’t even tell you to mind your language. Curse up a storm.”
His breathing hitches. I’m pretty sure he’s about to tell me to go eff myself, until:
“He’s such a fucking hypocrite.”
The sneer comes out like it’s been fermenting in his chest for months. Maybe longer.
And once it starts, it keeps coming. “He spent my whole life telling me I get to make my own choices. ‘Just because you’re in this chair doesn’t mean anyone gets to decide things for you, Sage.
’” His hand balls into a fist. “And then he pulls this shit? Ships me off like I’m—like I’m fucking luggage?
After letting all this shit happen in the first place? After causing it?!”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.” He laughs, bitter and scornful. “You don’t know what it’s like to have everyone treat you like you’re made of glass.”
“You don’t think so?” I spread my arms wide, as if to say, Look at me.
“I’m barely allowed to handle sharp objects anymore, sweetheart.
But in a really sick kind of way, I’m almost grateful that it’s my vision that went.
Because at least I don’t have to actually see the pity in people’s eyes when they get a glimpse of me coming with a walking stick and an awkward shuffle. ”
“It’s not the same,” he mutters.
“Of course it’s not,” I agree. “No, of course it’s not. For one, you’ve had to deal with it for so much longer. But do you know something?”
He grunts, sort of a surly Go ahead without actually saying the words.
“I would’ve been a hell of a lot more scared of what’s happening to me if it weren’t for you.”
That must surprise him, because his breathing slows and I can sense his eyes swing toward me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that you showed me that this—not just the wheelchair, but everything that’s happened to you, everything you’ve survived and overcome—doesn’t define you or limit you.
Not unless you let it do those things.” I brush my hair out of my face.
“Growing up, I used to get so angry at the world for being cruel to me. But the world’s been even crueler to you, and you’ve never once let that slow you down.
I admire that about you, Sage. You inspire me. ”