I’ll start at the beginning. It was a normal day.
Aside from school and a jerkface who needed his face rearranged by Flick, seeing as he was assaulting Gale, and a really messed up wake-up call when we got back from Flicky boy himself, everything was a-okay.
For example, Galen was outside working on Zahra’s car.
The reason? Zahra had a PTA meeting she had to get to, and since she was technically a guardian and a teacher, she had double duty. She had to be at the school by 5:30 this afternoon, and had come home to make sure there wasn’t anything wrong. (e.g. the house got set on fire, Trace hid another member of the Flock and wouldn’t turn them visible again, the Triplets were being idiots and stole more food, etc)
It was actually going fantastic, and she was about to leave.
At least until her car started smoking.
So, intending to give me a break (which she thought I knew nothing about), Galen decided to fix it herself. It was actually really nice of her, but I wondered if she knew what she was in for.
She’d only fixed cars with me, never one by herself – at least to my knowledge. It was sort of our bonding time, even if that time didn’t come often.
Plus, Zahra owned this old white 1999 Ford Taurus SE (License plate: MRSHMLW LV)… that was on its last leg. She used to have one of those white box-cube car things. But… Erm… There was this incident involving Robin and Jay that made the car sort of… blow up.
But, in their defense, they both paid for another customized license plate and researched a ton to find out a good-priced car without an enormous laundry list of production flaws… Although they still had several major issues.
While this went on, I had taken the opportunity to do absolutely nothing but sit on a hill outside with Woody (I know we’ve covered who /that/ is) and just try to relax.
Relaxing had been hard for me lately, because… I’d been having dreams.
Now dreams aren't too uncommon for Avians. I mean, Shift dreamt all the time about Switch when we had been separated.
Galen dreamt a lot about the School because of her headaches.
I could continue listing off people who dreamt stuff, but… It’s my day off.
I want to enjoy it.
I was working through the bridge of a song called Times (which I loved, by the way…) and was trying to figure out the fingerwork. (I think piano was easier, even if I had no idea how to play it – think about it: All the notes are in a straight, consistent line) Shift had dropped by earlier with an update on Gale’s progress and a cell phone. Gauge had worked out a burner phone system for us that would keep cycling phone numbers twice a month and had an untraceable signal that led back to varying backup numbers. Don’t ask me how… But it works.
That’s what the Gearhead was for.
He also asked me if I wanted to head to the ice cream place with them – meaning Switch, himself, Riven, Jay (don’t ask, I don’t know), Kue, Falice, Slate, Distort, Surge, and Gauge. I said no. I wanted to stay here and play guitar for a little bit. It sort of reminded me of this stupid song I’d heard by this guy… Something about playing too much guitar… but it was because of a girl.
I didn’t have a girl. Unless you count Galen. And something tells me that the context is entirely different in this case.
Sitting down on the grassy knoll, I dropped Woody beside me and pulled a 6-pack of Mountain Dew out of my bag. It was a nice day, although it was way too hot at a humid 99 degrees. We lived in the freaking southwest and it was that hot. But on a hill, there was a breeze and if I stayed in the shade it was pretty nice.
I was midway through my second run-through of the bridge when the cell that Shift gave me rang. Sighing, I reached over to the sleek black rectangle.
“Who’s this?” I asked in a bored tone, checking the caller ID and seeing it read ‘Zahra D.’
Why was Zahra calling me, unless her mothering tendencies had cropped up and she was either A, wondering where Crystal was, and/or B, asking me if I was keeping a safe distance away from her daughter. (You have no idea how many times she’s asked me that)
“It’s me,” came a familiar voice. Galen. What a surprise. “What’s up, Gale?” I asked, leaning back against my backpack that was positioned to be used as a backrest. “Uhm… Nothing,” she said, sounding a little uncomfortable. “I was just wondering… Do you think Rusty would give us a free headlight? Maybe a new head gasket?” she asked, naming my boss at Rusty’s Wheel and Deal – a car repair shop where I worked. “Probably… Why? What’s going on?” I asked with a sigh, putting an arm behind my head. “I’m working on a car. I need parts,” came her reply.
I smiled a little, wondering how much she thought I didn’t know. “Probably. He’s pretty nice, and may let you off with some others for a decent price,” I answered, sounding relatively indifferent. “Okay… Great,” she replied, her voice sounding muffled. “Hey, Trance… 6th and Main, okay?” she called. “Gotcha, Galen… I’ll be back in half an hour, tops… Whoa, whoa, whoa! Wait, Bee, don’t touch that – you’re going to shock your…self…” I heard a yelp and a buzzing noise. “Bee brain,” I heard Galen mumble into the receiver. “Rayk, you still there?”
“As always, sister dear,” I responded, smirking. “Alright. Well, thanks, Rayk. Love you,” she finished. I could practically see her smiling. “Love you too,” I finished, a smile unwillingly tracing across my face. “Okay… Gotta go. I’ll see you later for – Gah, Bumble! Trance is not going to kill herself skidding in oil! But if you take one more step, you’ll…” Silence on the line. Then another yelp and more silence. “Sorry… Our resident bee is getting into your supplies. I have to go fix it before someone crashes our gear,” she finished, sounding thoroughly frustrated. I heard a click on the line and she was gone.
I shook my head and snapped the Razr shut with a smirk. Galen and her antics. She was good at getting help, but I had a feeling she’d send Trance (for speed) and possibly Bumble (for muscle) to get car parts. She’d be lucky if they made it back in one piece. They were the only ones in the immediate area of the house, to my knowledge. Those that had not gone for ice cream had gone out flying, or swimming. That I knew of, anyway.
I was interrupted – ironically – in my reverie by a dry voice coming from beind me: “Wow, Pretty Boy… I didn’t know you had a single person that you loved…”
I sighed and didn’t turn around, fingering the strings across the wooden instrument. “Hi, Snow Princess… What brings you here?” I asked equally dryly, eyes narrowed as I played a minor chord before reaching over to snag a ‘Dew. She just snorted.
“Dunno. Everyone’s gone. BEN’s disappeared. I was looking for peace and quiet. At least until you popped off the cover of Victoria’s Secret and landed yourself here,” she snarked, seeming rather annoyed and puzzled why I was here all at once. I noticed her eyes kept glancing at the guitar I held.
I sighed, not in the mood to argue. It was too hot, and I had had too much of a bad night. “Whatever… Have you had lunch yet?” I asked, surprising even myself. She looked equally surprised, but was able to stammer a reply: “U-Uh… No. BEN ran out while I was working on it,” she answered, looking at me with a flat glare. I think it was her default expression.
“Hmm… Interesting,” I replied, turning my back to her and staring down the incline. I began to strum a few of the opening chords then running through the first verse without saying a word. I was just hoping that she would leave without judging me for what I did during my free time. “Since when did you start playing guitar?” she asked, her voice sounding fractionally less hostile and more calm and maybe even… civil?
“I don’t know. I… I guess when I was about 16. Shift bought a knockoff guitar to learn to play when we were first on the run… But it’s a boring story, so… Whatever,” I answered, closing my eyes. Please leave, Crystal. Please, just do us both this favor…
I heard grass rustle and when I opened them, I saw Crystal sitting beside me, staring off into the treeline at the foot of the steep hill.
I hated myself for the rushing feeling in my mind and the pounding in my heart that was urging me to get up and leave.
I grit my teeth, hit a minor chord by accident, and clenched my jaw.
She didn’t meet my eyes, but something made me wonder why she was talking to me. Why she was sitting next to me without warning and not insulting me.
Ha! Color me shocked and hang me up to dry.
She wanted to hear about me?
And without killing me, too.
“Uh… Okay. How much?” I asked, not turning to meet her. Squinting into the sun, I continued playing a random sequence of notes that didn’t sound half bad… but all they were was a nice melody.
“Whatever. Doesn’t matter to me, pretty boy,” she replied snarkily, scooting fractionally closer to me, as I was sitting in the shade and she was not.
Ah, Snow Princess was back.
“Fine. So, when I was 16, Shift was 15, and Gale was 14, we were in a seaport city off the east coast. We had a semi-permanent hideout and needed to rest. Galen had been rerescued from the School. We needed to stay in one place to recover and heal up, so we planted in Maine for a little while. Shift was bored, so he went to a local music store, bought a guitar. It was sort of cheap, but it was comparably good quality and it worked.
“Shift was pretty good at the theory and the technical stuff, note placement, et cetera… But one night I couldn’t sleep, like always. So, I pored over his theory books and decided that all the writing was crap – I couldn’t make heads nor tails of it.”
There was a small snort at that.
“So, I just started playing on it. I figured out the sound of the guitar and started to try to read music. It was calming, and it was easier for me to sleep if I didn’t worry about everything that could go wrong. And that, in a nutshell, is the end,” I finished awkwardly.
It was a short story, but it was a… decent one, I guess.
“Huh,” Crystal grunted, not seeming all that surprised.
I nodded and set the guitar aside. “Okay,” I started, “So I asked if you had lunch. Are you hungry?” It took a few moments for Crystal to register it.
She leaned back on her elbows and sighed. “Yeah… I, uh, didn’t feel like it earlier...”
She didn’t ‘feel like it?’ What? What did that mean?
“Oh, I dunno… I didn’t feel like whatever Quinn was making,” she replied.
“Uh… Alright, then. I have some ham sandwiches… apples… and possibly some of those really great Special K bars…” I muttered, holding my backpack with my teeth and pawing through it in the process. I glanced up at her for a moment, noting she’d turned away to face the tree on her left.
As she did… I noticed a bruise mark on her neck.
Without mentioning it, I dropped the bag silently and leaned fractionally closer, trying not to make noise. She still stayed facing the other way. I got closer, noticing that the bruise gave way to a sharp scratch on her collarbone.
To my alarm, I noticed something else: It was still bleeding.
Reaching a hand forward, something felt like it was pulling me towards her, and she happened to choose that moment to turn around, with my face centimeters away from hers. “Wha-?!” she growled, eyes flaring as she saw where my finger was nearly touching.
She flinched very visibly and jumped up. Or… at least, tried to. I was sort of in her way. And we were on a very steep hill.
Our arms tangled as I tried to stand up with her. She tried to shove me away, but it didn’t do much – I was trained to not let a guy six feet, weighing 180 lbs. move me. This was a girl under six feet weighing probably less than 100 lbs.
But I was offguard, and I hadn’t been anticipating this. And she was slightly panicky. My dog tag was entangled in her jacket’s zipper, and so we were locked six centimeters away from each other.
I was interrupted as we stumbled over Woody, the poor guy- er, guitar.
And that, ladies and gents, was the recipe for the beginning of our undoing.
From there, we tumbled down the hill, head over wings over tails over feet.
Within about ten seconds we were lying at the bottom of the hill, bumped bruised, and – you guessed it! – still tangled.
Crystal was laying on top of me, so much so that it was hard for me to breath… for a couple of reasons. Looking down at me from about an inch away. Yeah. It was that bad.
So I just kept going with the details that first bugged me.
“What’s with the bruise and the scratch?” I asked, staring up into her glassy magenta eyes. She looked like she was extremely unnerved by the proximity to me. Her hair flashed bright red for a fraction of a second, then her eyes widened fractionally and she clenched her jaw.
“Nothing… It was just an accident I had… in the kitchen… I, uh, ran into a… cabinet,” she growled, pausing a few times. I narrowed my eyes as she tried to untangle herself from my arms and legs. I locked my arm around her back. “Crystal…” I said in a low voice, nailing her with my gaze. She struggled for a few seconds, but eventually looked up into mine, expression slightly guilty.
“No, you didn’t,” I retorted, glaring up at her. While respecting her personal space, I caught her collar with my thumb and forefinger and tugged it down a quarter of an inch – just enough to expose the rest of the bruise… that was shaped vaguely like knuckles. “Crystal… What’s going on?” I asked, locking her closer with my free arm. “Are you being bullied again? Because, you know I’ve offered a million times to take care of them,” I drilled, narrowing my gaze on her.
Was it just me… or did she look… guilty?
“No… I told you… I did it in the kitchen,” she insisted, not meeting my eyes, voice so soft I could barely hear her. My finger accidentally grazed the bruise and she flinched. My finger came away bloody. A fist-shaped bruise. From the kitchen. She didn’t want to eat, so why was she in the kitchen?
The answer swamped me all at once:
My jaw clenched and my teeth ground together.
She wasn’t hungry… but she was now. She was reluctant to talk about it.
I looked up into her face. Crystal was watching me carefully.
She saw that I’d realized what had happened moments before I opened my mouth.
“Well, well, well… Playing dirty with Cryssie again, are we Rayk?” I heard an eerily familiar voice hiss before an arm grabbed mine and forced it to the ground.
And I could tell by Crystal’s expression that she had neither been expecting it, nor had she wanted him to come.
And yet he was here anyway.
