Мэгги Стифватер - Lament

I laughed. It was too true not to.

James, at my elbow, tugged me toward the door.

"Oh." Granna frowned at me. "And watch what you say around Delia."

How interesting.

TEN

 It was always noisy at the Sticky Pig, the only real restaurant in town. It was still too hot to eat outside, though, so we joined the ranks of loud, hungry people waiting to get a table. Smelling the smoky scent of barbecue and standing behind the "Please wait to be seated" sign with the smiling pig on it, I had a momentary sense of déjà vu, or missing time or something. Something about coming here so many times over so many years made me forget how old I really was now, and what I'd been doing before I walked in. James brought me back to the present by elbowing me.

"Come away from the light," he said in a low voice.

"Deirdre, come back to the land of the living, come back to us--ah! There she is, folks!"

I gave him a withering look. "I was thinking."

"About outer space, I guess, if your dreamy, distant expression was anything to go by." He smiled charmingly at the hostess, who was dazzled. "Deuce, please. None of that smoking crap."

She was too smitten to respond, so I translated. "Two for non-smoking, please."

The hostess nodded mutely and led us to a booth. We slid in on opposite sides. After she'd gone, I leaned toward James. "She was cute."

James picked up the menu (as if he didn't have it memorized by now) and muttered, "Not interested." He was looking at the back of the menu; the pig on the front smiled at me from beneath its checkered apron. "Lucky day. They do have supernatural stun guns as a dinner special."

I swatted the menu down from in front of his face. "And she was dazzled."

He pulled it back up again, engrossed by the list of side dishes. "Not interested."

"Why not?" I was really pushing it too hard, but I felt guilty. I was falling for Luke like a load of books out of a truck, and if I could at least get James to flirt with someone, I wouldn't feel so much like I was betraying our best-friendship.

He lowered the menu and looked at me, eyes narrowed. "I'm interested in somebody else, for your information." He looked away. "I wasn't going to tell you."

Relief washed over me. Thank you, God; may she be very pretty and all-engrossing and human.

"You know, you can tell me that sort of stuff." Okay, the guilt came back a little bit right there because I hadn't told him that sort of stuff. "Do I know her?"

James shrugged. "Maybe." He brightened a bit. "She was in my science section this year." He smiled, but not with his eyes. I looked at them intently, and he seemed to feel the need to elaborate. "Her name's Tara."

Funny thing, that, but as he spoke and I looked at his eyes, I felt like I saw movement shimmer around his head, like oil floating on top of water. I blinked.

"She has red hair," James continued. The oil shimmer became more solid; juxtaposed over James' face was an indistinct female face, hair hanging choppily down on either side of her cheeks. "Wavy. And green eyes." A pair of gray eyes looked back at me, moody and introspective. "You'll laugh," he added, "Because she's a goth chick. Black makeup and all.

Spiky choker. I dig that." But the girl in front of me, dark-haired, gray-eyed, no makeup, with a blue V-neck, wasn't a goth chick. The girl that was shimmering out of James' consciousness was me.

I looked away from his eyes, at the floor, and the image vanished. "She sounds interesting."

Okay. Maybe I was delusional. Maybe I was just imagining myself floating mysteriously in the air on a cosmic television screen. But I didn't think so. I think I read his mind.

Oh man.

This was about one thousand times harder to swallow than being able to move spoons.

The more I thought about it, the more I couldn't seem to wrap my brain around it. I could avoid moving spoons. I couldn't very well avoid looking into someone's eyes for the rest of my life. I didn't want this.

"Deirdre!" I focused on James again. "He asked what you wanted to drink."

The pimply waiter stood by the table, and I tried to look at him without looking at his eyes.

"Sorry," James jumped in. "My friend here was attacked by my mother's ill-tempered Bichon Frise earlier today and I'm afraid she's in a bit of shock. Could you get her some sweet tea?

Better bring her some fries, too."

The waiter fled. I stared at the table.

"What is wrong with you? You're completely spaced out." James reached across the table and knocked my chin up with his finger. "Is this about the killer cat or the goth chick?"

I sighed miserably. "I didn't want normal until I didn't have it anymore."

At that, he smiled. "Dee, you were never normal."

His answer was too easy, like some inspirational poster. "I was never this not normal. I'm a total freak and freak-magnet, now."

"Dee, moving clover and being hunted by evil fey doesn't change who you are. It's like learning to play a musical instrument. It's just something you do. And the evil fey--well, they're kinda like stalker-groupies. You're still the same you underneath, no matter how big the spoons are that you learn to move or how wildly the groupies are rocking the van as you drive away. The only thing that can change you during all this is you."

I frowned at him, careful not to study his eyes too closely. "When did you get so smart?"

He tapped his forehead. "Brain transplant. They put in a whale's. I'm passing all my classes with my eyes closed now, but I just can't get over this craving for krill." He shrugged. "And I feel sorry for the whale that got my brain. Probably swimming around Florida now trying to catch glimpses of girls in bikinis."

I laughed. It was impossible to talk about anything serious with James, but it was impossible to be upset, too. I think I probably took him for granted. "Why do you believe me?"

"Why shouldn't I?"

"Because it's crazy."

James' eyes darkened, and for a second I thought I saw something more to good old safe James.

"Maybe I'm crazy as well."

By the time James dropped me off, it was nearly dark. Granna hadn't come by the house yet, or if she had, Mom didn't mention it. I wondered how long Granna's green muck would take to prepare. And where she'd learned to make it. I escaped from Mom's grip before she could question me too closely and put on a long-sleeved shirt to cover up the chew marks. As I walked back into the twilight kitchen, Mom looked up from one of the bar stools. She pushed a mug of hot cocoa across the island toward me. A white flag. I accepted it without hesitation. For starters, I'd forgotten how she'd left me at the church; also, her made-from-scratch cocoa covered a multitude of sins.

She looked into the steam of her cocoa as it swirled upward, looking young and pretty in the dim ochre light of the kitchen. Knowing Mom, she probably painted the walls ochre for just that reason. "Did your gig go well?"

So it was to be the cozy approach.

"Very well. Granna and I had a good time together. She--" I stopped, realizing that Granna had asked me not to tell Mom she was coming. "She has my dress at her house. I accidentally got some soda on it and she's going to clean it."

"And James got you some dinner?"

I took a sip of the cocoa. Dark chocolate sludge slid down my throat and for a moment I forgot what the question was. Mom had to repeat it. I took another sip. There was a hint of orange in there. "At the Sticky Pig."

"I'd rather you spend time with James than Luke."

I frowned, but didn't look up. It was one thousand times easier to cross Mom when you didn't look at her. "Why?"

"For one thing, I know James. I know his family. I know you're all right when you're with him."

"I'm all right when I'm with Luke." I thought of him sliding the dagger silently into the cat's jaw, sticking a blade through its brain without a second's hesitation.

"He's too old for you. And he doesn't go to your school." The last sentence was a bit indecisive.

She was guessing.

I looked up, right at her. Her weakness lay in her indecision. I wondered how many times I'd had an opening in a discussion like this and missed it because I was too complacent.

"You're right. He's only here for the summer, and he's a senior. I know he's a little old. But I'm not doing anything stupid. And he's a gentleman. Is there anything wrong with that?"

Mom blinked. I don't think she knew what to do. Had I ever rationally contradicted her before?

Ever? She drank her cocoa, still young and pretty, but now with a glaring chink in her armor.

I could have waited for her to say something, but I didn't. I pressed home my victory. "And I have my cell phone with me all the time, so you can always get me. Don't I always answer it?

You raised me to know what to do. You're going to have to trust me."

Oh, damn, that was good! I washed my smile down with some cocoa. That was killer.

Mom sighed. "I suppose you're right. But I do want to know whenever you're out with him." She stood up and went to the kitchen to rinse out her mug, her head framed by the dark night window above the sink. "What does James think about this?"

"Uh--what do you mean?"

She turned and faced me, expression slightly withering. "Use your brain, Deirdre."

ELEVEN

 In my dream, Luke was sitting in his tired Bucephalus, arms crossed on the steering wheel, forehead resting on them. Barely visible in the moving darkness of the car, the tore on his arm glinted, a dull secret.

I wasn't in the car, but I could see the corner of his face as if I were an invisible, tiny watcher perched on the gear shift. His lips moved, his voice barely audible.

"I am Luke." The pause before his next words stretched into hours, lifetimes. Mist moved outside the car windows, pale, damp fingers leaving marks on the glass. "It's been one thousand, three hundred forty-eight years, two months, and one week. Please don't forget me."

The mist dragged with it a kind of slow, dangerous music, alluring, like the promise of sleep to a dying man. Luke stretched out his arm to the radio and spun the knob.

Sound blasted out of the speakers and shook me awake. Blinking around my room, I couldn't figure out what time it was; the light in the living room was odd. Then I realized that it was because mist pressed against the windows, and the moon reflected into every cranny. I groaned and stretched out on the sofa, working out a crick in my neck. Rye looked up at me from his post on the floor. His expression suggested that both of us would sleep better in my bed.

"But there's freaks up there," I whispered to him. I sat up and stretched again, catching a glimpse of the clock on the wall: two a.m. Sleep seemed far away.

Before I had time to wonder what had woken me out of my dream, I heard a dull tap on the window. Rye sprang to his feet. I jumped, more startled by Rye's sudden movement than the noise. At the window, a face loomed out of the mist, nose pressed against the glass, leaving a print.

Even as Rye began to growl, I relaxed. It was Luke. He pressed his nose against the window again, making a funny face. I held up my finger to him---just a second--and bounded into the kitchen. I paused in front of the laundry room to put on jeans and my long-sleeved T-shirt from earlier, feeling a little stupid that Luke had seen me in my slinky pajama top and crazy hair. Rye followed me to the back door, still rumbling under his breath.