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Chapter 12
The sun rose. Its pointed light shone through the window, prodding Julia’s eyes as an eager child would. She could not help but sit up and look about the room, letting the blanket that covered her crumple down to her waist in the process. There was, perhaps, a gentle wariness about the light, one that had first been drenched in its ecstasy at her being awake. Did it wake her to warn her of something? To tell her…
What? Julia asked herself. Her own drowsy stupidity had won out over reason, and when she realized this, the early light became once again a sharp one. Turning away from the beams that flew through the frost-coated window, for the sake of her eyes only, she squinted at the wall, whose creamy paint was exhibiting a strange light show, the kind that could only be viewed from underwater. She glanced from the glimmering wall to the window, letting her mind wander.
The night before—or it could have been afternoon, from what she remembered of the constantly switching time zones—had been a blur, at least after the interrogation room. Kelly had made it almost a point not to ask about the forest and what had transpired there, though she might have said something if Julia had brought it up again, which she herself even refused to do. The air had been filled with a sort of awkward stubbornness, two flavors of denial that intertwined to form the perfect environment for sleep. Fumbling with her words as if with keys—though by now it was apparent that Kelly was above keys, functionally—Julia’s only companion in the apartment let her use the bathroom, then offered her the bedroom, something Julia was infinitely relieved to take her up on. Saying something in a sleepy tone about a new room being added soon, Kelly led the way into the small bedroom whose window had been used in a strange egress only earlier that day. The glass pane now shut tightly, its shade tied tightly by a single string above it (yes, it had been nighttime, she remembered, as there was no light peeking through the cloud that had been smothering that side of the apartment) questions about the entire adventure resurfaced in her mind, only to be pulled back down by the weight of fatigue. Kelly shut the door, and maybe went to bed on the couch, Julia guessed.
The unpleasantness of sleeping in a strange bed was lost in a sea of need, an intense and deep desire to be dead to the world, to be away. When she collapsed on the comforting firmness of the mattress, pushing her nose deep into the fabric, smelling whatever she could of the life that it usually comforted, she felt the entire world close in around her, as if drawing the curtains at the end of a play. She knew in the back of her head that it was only the intermission, but she was fixated on letting her subconscious take control. The one thing she had remembered was the strange scent of curving, whisping smoke, as if the last person to lie in that bed (left unnamed in the smelling of her, though named in the knowing, which was wholly unimportant) shed herself at the end of each day, body and soul, giving all up to the nighttime reign of dreams and unspoken words. Smiling into the pillow, Julia had understood it all.
Awake, she no longer did. The previous night now seemed a jumble of half-muttered thoughts and nonsensical ramblings, and she dismissed them as such. The only real things now, as far as she could tell, were her, the sun and the window. That would all change once she stepped outside of the room, of course, but for the moment, she felt the silence her only comfort, the only thing that supported the edges of her mouth so that they didn’t fall into a frown—
The silence. What was Kelly doing? Why was she so quiet? She seemed like the kind of person who would be very loud in the morning, groaning and aching from the effects of a hangover. The thought prodded Julia softly, waiting for her to respond, to kick the sheet aside and creep over to the door. She almost did, but caught herself for a strange reason: She was wondering, Do Adepts get hangovers? Do Adepts drink? Do Adepts… Her mind trailed off as she sat still, her arms flung out to the sides of her, clinging to the edges of the bed for support.
In that moment, the door slowly opened a crack, then flew out to give way to Kelly. Standing there with a contemplative frown, she held the door steady on the knob with one hand, sticking her other down her jeans pocket. They were the same clothes she’d worn the night before, except that the t-shirt was slightly wrinkled, and now she was in her bare feet.
Julia didn’t move, just staring as Kelly wriggled her toes against the cold floor. There seemed to be an indescribable offense wedged between them, something done to Julia that built a wall of unbreakable silence around her. Whatever the hurt was (and she could sense it, touch the mental sore spot, feel it as if it was bone in shards), pleased her greatly. Surprised at herself, though not disgusted, Julia enjoyed the silence, the discomfort it brought to Kelly. She couldn’t remember where she had gotten that. That cruel pleasure. It was unfamiliar to her, yet it seemed to exist so beautifully in her mind, fitting like the last missing fragment of a broken vase, except alive.
The wonderful thing was that the silence wasn’t even enough for Kelly to get angry about, because what would Julia have to say after the day before, why couldn’t she stay quiet? Nevertheless, her observant gaze disturbed Kelly, the lack of words in the air leaving little room to breathe. It was the possibility, she supposed, of what was passing through her mind that was what frightened.
Later she would be ashamed of doing this, of getting back, in however small a way it was. But it was so easy: All she had to do was look. Just look, and Kelly unraveled in her mind, everything clear, all laid out. Inexperienced, it was obvious right there. And young, at least by the Adepts’ standards, from what she gathered. Stupid and insecure and deserving of everything she got.
“Pancakes?” The word disrupted it all. She’d seen Kelly’s mouth move, even heard her, sound synced perfectly with lips. The only two things that she really had to put together to make sure it was real. But it couldn’t be. Obviously.
Frowning, Julia repeated it: “Pancakes?”
“For breakfast. Pancakes?”
It was…pancakes. What were pancakes? How did they make sense after the night before? No, she knew what pancakes were; they just felt so old, bygone, so archaic, like adobe huts, or the stone wheel with a stick for an axel. They no longer belonged, and that was just after one night. They were so simple it was almost insulting.
“Or waffles?” Kelly asked, tilting her head to the side and leaning slightly into the door. Like they were roommates. And this was college. And they had class in an hour. Julia had never been to college, she’d worked in a steno pool, doing occasional filing, so this further confused her. “Your choice. You’re the one who had the shitty night.” She pressed her back against the door, pushing it into the wall with a small thump, and stared at Julia, who was still sitting up.
“Oh.” It was clear. This was an apology. “So that makes up for everything,” she said, taking on an “Of course” tone.
“No,” Kelly said, not moving from the door. “But wouldn’t you like to have special treatment after what happened?”
Didn’t she? It seemed natural. A Band-Aid, numb the pain, a shot of morphine. Pancakes. With chocolate chips. Instantly, her sadistic intentions were lost in hunger, a literal one mixed with a figurative. It would be nice, she thought, to have breakfast. She sat, poised to speak, every few seconds thinking she would accept the Band-Aid, then mentally backing down before she’d even begun.
“Well, I’ll make them anyway,” Kelly said, standing up straight, exiting the room. She paused in the doorway and added, “You can have the shower first. You know where the bathroom is, towels are on the rack. Dress in your old clothes when you’re done.” She was out of sight before Julia could—
What? she thought. What would you have done? Spit? Swear? She slid out of bed, disgusted with herself for forgetting her hate. Not that despising Kelly was all that important. But what would she be, in this new world? (Who had she been in the old one, for that matter?) She’d thought maybe someone angry, someone spiteful, but it was too much work. It was exhausting, she realized, to focus on someone else like that. Actually, the whole thing, the entirety of what was happening to her, was exhausting: She was being shoved through a tunnel on the front end of a train, and she had to jump off at a stop, but which stop, well, hell if she knew.
“Pick a stop, Julia,” the world seemed to be saying. “Pick a path, choose a road, pick, decide, choose,” and nobody would just be quiet and let her think. She couldn’t sit in a room somewhere, alone, and give any of it any thought. Shouldn’t she get credit for at least making it this far without refusing to go on? She deserved time, more than anyone typically deserved anything.
Sighing, she stepped gently across the floor. Wait, why weren’t her feet…?
Oh, she thought with a frown. Her shoes were still on. She was wearing everything she’d been wearing yesterday, except for her lost jacket, which she’d have to ask Kelly about later. No wonder her feet weren’t cold.
Julia moved to kick her shoes off, then thought better of it. There was no reason, necessarily, to trust these people. Not that she expected them to suddenly start stealing her clothes, but it was a good idea to be cautious. About what, exactly, was still unclear to her.
So Julia shuffled to the door, working her feet back into her shoes as she did so. Outside, in the kitchen-living room, Kelly was glaring at a frying pan, sheets of steam rising off of it as it lay on the hot stove. Blotches of beige shivered against its black surface, bubbles growing rapidly, screaming for attention. Leaning against one side of the doorway, Julia could hear them speaking, crying. What were they saying? she wondered in her morning haze, consisting of both the pancakes’ steam, and the left-overs of her fatigue. Well, what other reason do creatures acquire the capacity for speech? Need. Calling out for one’s mother, screaming for a bottle; or sobbing because of pain; attention, even. Desperation, she supposed, was the father of the basic instinct to speak.
But these were pancakes. This was breakfast. They weren’t calling for their mother, not screaming out for attention. Just air bubbles popping, sizzling. She was stupid for even thinking about it.
Kelly glanced over at her and nodded, acknowledging her presence. Julia only stared at the frying pan.
The dappled glass lining the door and two walls were slick with water, providing a shield. Not necessarily against prying eyes, but something else. Something it was of utmost importance to escape, whatever it happened to be. She pressed her hands against the plastic wall that the spigot lay on, bent her head under the steady stream of water, and let her rage boil. There was too much she didn’t know, too little she actually wanted to, and too many people acting like her parents. And then a reservoir of tears nearly broke to the surface at the thought of the past, of it all. But no, with determination the urge to sob passed, and she had to search for that anger again. Yes, it was tiresome, but a beautiful feeling worth pursuing, the only high she’d ever experienced.
But this isn’t a high, is it? she thought. I’m panicking. If anything, this is withdrawal. Withdrawal from what, though? Life? That seemed too simple. Maybe just simple enough.
It was all far too large. The shower, that was. Too accommodating, sensing her needs like Kelly had realized her hunger, knowing her anger intimately, conforming to any and every wish. It was vast enough for her to lie down in it without touching the walls, and the thought of that only served to enrage her further. It catered to her demands, letting her push as hard as she could on the wall for release, the slightly coarse tile floor preventing her from sliding back into a fall – all the while shunning her one, true desire: To be listened to, to deliver pain the way pain had been delivered to her. Eye for an eye may have been Old Testament to everyone else, but Julia was finding just how similar Hamurabi’s code was to closure.
Glancing to the right of her, Julia glared at a bottle of body soap lying on a plastic shelf that jut lazily out from the wall. It knew she needed it, and it was ready to serve. In a desperate slap at the invisible hand offering her comfort, the sympathetic stranger handing her a tissue and a caring expression, Julia swiped at the bottle, staggering toward it and smacking it off the shelf. It fell to the floor, emitting an astounded thump muffled by the scream of the spigot. Unfortunately, being made of plastic, and not glass, the damned thing only dented slightly, rolling over to show a white crease where it had hit the tile directly.
Punching a knob with the palm of her hand, Julia decidedly ended all relations with the shower, realizing entirely how silly she was being, and knowing that there were far worse things than feeling stupid. Her anger was precious to her, a trophy she had won by simply being alive. A side effect of it was a sense of hopeless melodrama, a burden she could handle. She stepped out of the stall, shut the glass door behind her, and snatched a towel from a wall-mounted rack.
Beginning with her long, dark hair, she rubbed her body dry and raw with the towel’s thick bristles, working her way down to her toes, rubbing gently under her armpits and shamefully over and around her legs. She dared not look at herself in the mirror, not wishing to know how she would feel about her naked figure after what had happened. Would she desire to be hardened, to look tougher? Did she look tougher? She’d always thought that, skin bare, she had no method to hide from herself. So it had typically been in front of a mirror in the early morning, as light streamed around the edges of a curtain-covered window, that she would analyze herself, look over not only every physical aspect of her body, but also every flaw, every overemphasized moment of embarrassment (mostly overemphasized by Julia herself) from the day before, anything that she could remember doing wrong. Who am I? was always a simple question with a very clear, but often disappointing, answer, when she had just stepped out of the shower and found her form distorted in the foggy glass before her.
So, dry, but not entirely clean, Julia dressed in her old clothes, avoiding her vision in the glassy wall (for one whole wall had been set aside as a vanity). She buttoned on her white shirt and tugged on her sweater last. Glancing down at the clothes, she sighed in disgust. Was that what she was wearing? Well, yesterday had been Thanksgiving, after all. She’d wanted to impress Keith, though with what, she hadn’t been exactly sure. The clothes would probably have put him off, but the rest of her wardrobe was exactly the same or very similar to it: White and blue button-down formal shirts, and then long-sleeve gray and white shirts. (Grandma Pondis had instilled in her that it was very unbecoming of a little girl to wear black. She used to say, “Don’t tempt the fates,” Julia thought with a snort.) Maybe he would’ve liked her anyway. Come to think of it, he was the one who’d invited her. But then he—
Julia’s eyes widened, a sharp pain moving up her spine in response to her agitation. Kelly.
She pulled her sweater off hurriedly (it was clenching her chest uncomfortably, something that she had really only planned to bear for dinner the night before) and went for the door, thrusting it open with an indignant expression on her face. Kelly sat at the kitchen table, halfway through a sip of milk from her glass. A plate of thick pancakes lay before her, and another one of equal size opposite her, in front of one of the chairs in which Julia had been doused during the previous day.
When Julia stormed into the room, disregarding the foolishness of the situation, Kelly merely set the glass back on the table and looked up at her expectantly. Must have been a trick Allen taught her after Julia had fallen asleep. She could just imagine him saying, “Now, remember, Kelly—” no, he would’ve said “Miss Millar”—“Miss Millar, remember, look like you’re listening! Act like a therapist, and, even if something she says unnerves you, don’t look uncomfortable. Just nod as if you don’t give a shit!” The “give a shit” part was mostly Julia’s mind flexing its anger, twitching in fury, but the rest of it might as well have been true, for all she knew.
And she suddenly realized: That was it. That was the game. The best way, in Kelly’s perspective, to deal with something with which it was impossible to deal (even when Kelly had experienced the same thing), was to pretend that she knew what to do. And to pretend that it was all under control. Whether things were or were not under control was irrelevant to Julia. She’d found the stray thread, the sickly cow amongst the herd, the small child lost in the woods on its way home. Weakness.
“What do you have against Communism?” Kelly’s eyebrows dipped. Perfect. She’d had to sacrifice the ability to bring up her brother, at least for the moment, but she’d earned a weapon far larger than one of blatant revenge (For what else had she planned to use the tool of her brother’s sudden loss of memory, her sudden loss of family?). Julia had never cared much about politics. Live in the world however it is seemed a simple enough motto. Politicians, she figured, were out to screw their interns, while everyone else was out to simply screw the economy and the environment, in that order. Indifference was the safe alternative to the “screwing”. But that one memory of the night before, of Kelly joking about Communism – she’d grappled onto that. It gave her at least one clear window into Kelly’s psyche, however small that window was. And politics, as she turned the idea around in her mind, was a tremendously large window, leading to other equally large windows as well; and since she couldn’t care less about the subject, it would be so much easier to manipulate. It could last her months, if she never tired of it.
So she pursued the thread: “It’s been irritating me since last night. You’re the one Humans rely on entirely, and you don’t know about the economy?” Stupid line. She knew. But she’d have time to work on it, if she could only manage to stay barely convincing.
Kelly, though, was taking the bait: “Communism? You’re—” She tried to stop herself, attempted to maintain control of the conversation, but couldn’t help it. “Do you even know what you’re talking about?” If the lie was transparent, it was made more opaque by the suddenness of it.
And so off Kelly went, babbling about “lives lost” and “common sense”, leaving the pancakes to go cold. Julia leaned against the counter, smiling inwardly at her genius.
Such a pleasant game.
Besides, she couldn’t have changed Kelly’s mind if she’d wanted to. Kelly wasn’t convincing her to “Vote Hannity”, was she? It didn’t matter, really. Just keep up the act. It was fun while it lasted, and postponed the…whatever. The “whatever is going to happen”. The future was all so dangerously vague, like a child managing to convince his sleepy mother before she opened her eyes that it was Sunday, instead of Monday, and, no, he didn’t need to get dressed for school – knowing all the while that Mother would wake, and see the threatening alarm clock, red numbers blurry in her eyes’ morning glaze. A storm cloud in the distance, smelling faintly of the possibility of dewy grass and lightning-struck wood. Inevitability: So easily thought to be “Maybe”.
“…and Hitler practically studied under Stalin!” Kelly was getting strangely into it. She seemed to be deriving some sort of pleasure from the conversation, the strange kind, somehow similar to Julia’s sadistic joy from earlier (however small it was), though perhaps purer, with much more concentration on Kelly’s part. She appeared to be able to rip facts from the back of her mind at a moment’s notice, without having to look anything up. Knowing exactly what to say. Maybe she didn’t realize how good she was at this.
“Really. And who was it that planned the Holocaust?” Julia threw back absent-mindedly. There was something else, here, that didn’t make sense. Not the politics. That never made sense.
“Eichmann.”
“What?”
“Adolf Eichmann,” she said slowly, in a voice more properly used to instruct a small child. “He organized the Holocaust.”
“How do you know that?”
Kelly frowned. Julia had staunched the stream, had ended her moment of euphoria, of superiority. It didn’t matter, she knew that. Debates always ended, sometimes setting quietly as the day, and at other times crashing to the ground, the twisted wreckage of what had once been a pleasant conversation, broken and bitter. But still – it just wasn’t done, like a virgin’s loss of virtue in Victorian England, or the lifting of a Muslim woman’s veil on the train, just because you needed so desperately to see what was behind the mask. It wasn’t done, either for stupid reasons (everyone else had the same impossible urge, and it was a silent agreement that none would follow through—waiting for your friends to get there before you all started the party, except, as the joke would go, the party never begins), or because of a secret wanting, a private wish that the urge would stop, that virtue would be held, that the sweet silk of innocent (or seemingly innocent) pleasure would never be torn.
But pleasure had been torn. She was reminded of her surroundings, by the woman who had rescued her from them with an argument just a moment ago. “I have spare time,” she finally responded, her right elbow digging into the soft red cushion of the sofa as she stared at Julia. “And it’s interesting. I never got into these things when I was—”
And she frowned when she realized she couldn’t continue. Yet another taboo. Julia already knew it, the words were so apparent against the pale white of Kelly’s face, but, for politeness’ sake, the sentence could not be finished. Just a trap, a way to save face. How could Julia claim anger over something not said? But the unsaid words still stung. When I was human, or maybe even normal. Devious things, those invisible statements.
There was something about it that Julia would not understand, though. This misconception did not present itself to her as a bumbling mass of confusion, but rather slipped by her, an idea that was so foreign to her mind that she might not even have been able to recognize the emotions involved. A mourning for the self that was not selfish; a knowledge that lasted forever, yet bore a most gruesome expiration date; a sense of pity for a soul so foolish that its confidence could be looked down upon by the unconfident, but greatly admired by those who realized the idiocy in such matters as ‘confidence’; and the sincerest questioning of human nature there could ever be, with the greatest focus on profit. These things Kelly knew there were no proper words for, and were also undeniable in existence. These wonderments she had found, her contradictions, were more real than she ever would be.
Kelly’s ties to the world brought her back, dragging her from her inner sanctuary of philosophy, of nonsensical existentialism. Julia was staring at her, attempting to conceal a glare, though badly, and perhaps pointedly. Smiling, Kelly glanced back at the table.
“The pancakes are dead,” she mused.
Julia snorted and said, “So are you.”
Kelly’s eyes snapped back to Julia. “Is that what you think?” The question was almost an accusation. Another taboo. Another trap, set by someone hurt by the world, with only a wish to dole out the same pain, the same harm that had been done to them. Julia couldn’t complain. She’d wanted to do the same thing.
Stupidly, she shrugged, embarrassed at having touched Kelly’s sore spot.
Turning away slightly, Kelly hoped that Julia would guess the truth from her eyes. But nobody takes that leap; nobody bothers to communicate in that so intimate way. That would give no excuse for misunderstanding. And without misunderstanding, there would be no excuse for not offering an apology – if we, perhaps, let ourselves know, enabled ourselves to see what pain or distress there was in another person, there would be no excuse to retain the comfort of frigid isolation, to ignore the truth of the matter. And the truth…what is that, but a fact that should be ignored if bliss is the desired result? It didn’t matter if Kelly was no longer human. If she would never die. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know if she was still human, if she was something in between, or if she still had a soul, or if souls were nothing but the whim of some English playwright from long ago, some drunk who only worried about paying the bills by making silly noblemen and women cry. Those questions didn’t matter to Julia. And it would be so stupid, so futile, so absurd to try to convince her to care.
Just as it would have been pointless for Allen to try to convince the both of them of how similar they were. Luckily for the two, or perhaps unluckily, he never thought to try.
“Sorry,” in any case, was the only word that Julia gave. The absence of a full apology filled the air, and yet Kelly gladly forgave and forgot.
Smiling weakly, she let a small laugh, almost a sigh, escape from her mouth, along with, “That’s okay.” The space around them was awkward, though: tainted by offense. Then, with a burst of much-needed exuberance originating, perhaps, simply from that need, Kelly stood up, brushed off her pants as if there was actually something on them, and said, “God, I suck at playing hostess. What did you, um, want to do, exactly?” She stared at Julia expectantly.
The words were surprising. Julia had, of course, thought that Kelly and the rest of the Adepts were organized; had schedules. Maybe even “plans” that looked like blueprints for some scheme of… Domination? When the thought came to her, Julia wondered why it hadn’t occurred before. What did these people do, exactly, with their “Realms”, as they called them? Slavery…?
“Not really,” Kelly said, laughing. Shock flashed across Julia’s face, and then quickly faded; the fleeting sensation of prickling amazement was familiar to her, lately, and so she chose not to linger on such a predictable emotion.
Of course, you can read my mind… All I really need, now, is a vampire lover named “Angel,” and my sitcom-y life is complete.
“Sorry to disappoint,” Kelly said, half-gesturing to her temple, “but my brain is a little bit inconsistent. You can think whatever you want, most of the time, and I won’t catch a glimpse of what’s in your head.”
Julia stared for a moment, to which Kelly responded by elaborating further: “You looked like you had a funny comeback forming up, and I never picked up on it. You can say it now, if you want,” she apologized.
“No,” Julia said slowly, “I think it’d be better if you explained a little bit more about the—this.”
Surprisingly, (I’m going to stop being startled by things, Julia promised herself.) Kelly sat back down next to her, smiled, and began tugging on a lock of her hair with one finger while nodding amiably. She was, apparently, more open to questions than she had been the night before.
“Well,” she started, “we’re not allowed to, you know, ‘be naughty’.”
“Naughty?” Julia asked with a measure of ambivalence at the use of the word.
“Not kinky-naughty,” Kelly said quickly. Then, after a pause, “Or, actually, there is something on that, but I was talking—”
“Wait, what?”
“Maybe,” Kelly suggested, “I should start, um, elsewhere.”
“Occasionally telepathic. Yeah.”
“And Allen’s—”
“French.”
“But you said he could do something.”
“Aside from pissing me off, what he does is completely normal. Actually, pissing me off is normal.”
“What? What can he do?”
“What we all do.”
“Super strength?”
“Don’t make it sounds like we’re superheroes. We’re not. Allen especially, the bastard.”
“Allen!”
“Hello, Julia. Kelly.”
“Apparently, he also has a key to my apartment…”
