CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I barge right into Valentin’s tent.
She lurches from where she was lying on her bed, one ankle crossed over her knee. A book topples from her hands and straight onto her face.
“At this rate, I’m going to go home a ghost,” she mutters, closing the book and placing it out of harm’s way.
“I can’t sleep,” I announce, pacing back and forth beside her bed.
I really should, considering what lies ahead.
Even with the help of the ghosts, it’s going to be unbelievably taxing returning Valentin and every other stolen artifact.
With Everest awake and the carousel up and running, there’s no time to waste, pun very much intended.
But the second I’m back alone in my tent, I’m going to think of him, the warmth of his arms around my body, the steady caress of his voice. That won’t do.
“Well, it is still light out,” Valentin says drily. “But I can see you all abuse your circadian rhythm. Why can’t you sleep?”
I think it’s beautiful for you to love as much as you do.
God damn that man. I almost consider telling Valentin precisely why I can’t sleep, exactly who fills my brain with fantasies and what-ifs and should-I-haves that I can’t afford to entertain.
But I don’t, because if I say it out loud, it makes it real.
And right now, too many of my problems are real.
As if sensing my anxiety, more floating candles flicker on in Valentin’s tent, accompanying the one that was serving as a reading light.
“I just…” I say, vaguely gesticulating with my arms. “I need a distraction.”
Valentin frowns. “What kind?”
As she sits up, the covers fall to her waist, and I realize the fair’s given her a pink night gown jarringly similar to Novalie’s favorite Barbie pajamas. An idea clicks in my head.
I grin slowly. “Come on. You get to see what your mom was like when she was younger.”
Valentin is surprisingly game, so maybe an inclination towards constructive destruction is a dominant gene. She gets dressed in seconds after I tell her what I need to do, and I can only hope the fair has recovered enough to cooperate with me.
“I’ve barely ever asked for anything,” I mutter under my breath as we walk towards the outskirts of the fair, in the opposite direction of the river; no need to step foot near the source of time or approach a dragon for what’s to come.
“And you have no problem churning out all the cotton candy flavors in the world or conjuring different night skies for Everest, so please, please, please just let me blow off some steam.”
“It’s so weird hearing you talk to it,” Valentin says, but there’s no judgment there. “Does it always listen? When it’s not rotting, I mean.”
It’s nearly twilight, and the forest is a mass of inky black, but I’ve lived in this area for a long time.
I could trace the silhouettes of the trees blindfolded, and I can easily identify a foreign object in the most meager lighting.
A smile creeps across my face at the large, very un-tree-like shape that’s sitting right at the edge of the woods, right before the path that I cannot cross. “It does today.”
Valentin’s spotted it too. She leans forward, picking up the pace. “What the fuck is that?”
The best way to describe it is a giant ball of things. Its diameter is nearly our height, but it sits patiently as we scrutinize just what the fair has cooked up for me to take apart.
“Are those socks?” Valentin asks, nose wrinkling.
From various nooks and crannies emerge colorful socks. I spot other objects I recognize – keys, cables, rubber bands. There’s a giant guitar sticking out from one corner, and it looks suspiciously like the one my parents left behind when we moved home.
“It’s a bunch of forgotten things,” I exclaim.
The fair’s taken in all manner of objects that people have lost and can never recover, tossed it into a large magical processor of sorts, and spat it out for me.
To the right of the globule, I spy two baseball bats with matching helmets and cream body suits, and they remind me of something, but I can’t place it…
“No way,” I mutter, as the memories flood me: Nova and I decked out in protective gear, swinging bats around a rage room after any minor inconvenience. I lift my suit up and let out a low whistle.
“You really said safety first, huh?” I ask the fair, holding Valentin’s suit out to her.
We pull them on over our clothes, then reach for our helmets.
As Valentin’s slides over her head, I notice she has the same spark in her eye that Nova would get every time we did this together.
It’s been a long time since I even considered our shared activities – there’s too much nostalgia wrapped into specific things from my past – but right now, staring at the prospect of what’s before us, I’m strangely at peace.
I pick up our bats. “You ready?”
She doesn’t wait for my go-ahead before she starts swinging.
The whole thing is utter chaos. The fair did its best, but the giant orb of long-lost items isn’t the best for destruction.
It squishes more than it splinters, and we’re mostly whacking at it aimlessly, squealing as something pops out of the garish knot.
But it does the trick. I’m beating the hell out of this thing, letting my body take over, forgetting about time travel and talking books and the god who makes blood rush to my head with the smallest of smiles.
I don’t know what Valentin’s thinking of, but from the vicious way she’s going at the fair’s target, I finally see the anguish of her captivity here catching up to that calm, composed demeanor.
We fall on our butts in unison, sweat-drenched and panting. My entire body aches in the best way, and I’m laughing as we lie down side by side, the cold of the snow barely a hint of bother in our suits.
“So you and mom really went to a rage room all the time?” Valentin asks through gasps.
“We discovered them after her first break up,” I say, falling right into the memory.
“That guy was useless, nowhere near good enough for her, and she did that thing most people do with first relationships and stopped hanging out with me as much. I was so mad at her, but my mom told me to be patient. Said she’d come around.
And after he broke up with her through a note in class, there she was at my door, saying she had something she needed me to do with her. ”
“She told me about that,” Valentin says, turning to her side. “What an asshole.”
“The worst!” I agree. “Anyways, we found this place near her house, broke a bunch of stuff, and then she apologized. All was well, but this became a tradition. After shitty partners, horrible tests, bad news. You name it.”
Valentin’s gone quiet. “She’s never mentioned that.”
Something in my heart twists. “I’ve never been able to do a lot of the things I used to do with her. Karaoke, smashing things to bits. Maybe it was the same for her.”
“It’s weird, isn’t it? How you could know someone so well, but still not know every part of them,” Valentin says. “It’s hard imagining her in school, dating. The only other facet of her I’ve known is as a doctor, and that’s because I followed in her footsteps.”
“Did you always know you wanted to?” I ask.
Valentin has told me a little here and there about her family and career, but I’ve been ravenous for more.
She’s living the life I thought I’d have, with the people I love, and there’s a sick desire in me to know every inch of the path she’s taken.
I have to restrain myself from hounding her for details that are superfluous at best, invasive at worst.
Valentin nods. “Yes, I think so. Mom never pushed it on us, but she loved her job so much, and I’d ask her questions about it constantly.
I never considered anything else as seriously, and I have wondered if I only ended up where I am because that’s what made logical sense, or if I would’ve become a doctor if my mom wasn’t. ”
“I get that.” Sometimes I wonder the same about my time research.
It’s been ages since I’ve been able to sit with my notes in the archives, develop and test a new hypothesis with time-mending.
I hadn’t realized just how much joy I derive from being keeper, from uncovering new mysteries about the universe in a manner that is only afforded to me.
“It’s hard separating all those external factors from your intrinsic desire.
And even harder if you think your life has only been circumstantial. ”
“Definitely. There was a period when I rebelled in other ways. I got really into video games for a bit; I think I was looking for a way to feel different from her. Everyone saw me as a mini-Nova, and like every child who idolizes their mother, I wnted to be her, but not like that, you know?”
I feel a little guilty, knowing how much I saw Valentin as a shadow of her mother. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Despite our similarities, Mom and I have had very different lives,” she says.
“We moved around for Mom’s fellowship and early career before moving back to San Francisco.
She’s put her roots down in one place while I’m still trying to figure out which city feels right.
She’s so extroverted, while I prefer my romance novels.
I barely dated until I met my wife. Your career is only one part of you.
There’s so much else that makes up a person. ”
“That’s an impressive thing to learn, especially in a profession that takes up as much of your life as yours does.”
“Thank my therapist,” she quips.
I laugh. “And you’re in a fellowship now?”
“Endless school,” Valentin says, grinning. “But, yes. Surgical critical care.”
I fall quiet. I think about the programs Nova and I had looked at together, wonder what it would be like if I were to go back, pick up where I left off. I’ll have to take Valentin back, and I’ll see her life there, the physical manifestation of the choices I never got to make.
A small voice in the back of my head asks: what if you just stayed behind?