A History of Glitter and Blood (16 page)

Piccolo says, “We need to stay safe, but we also need to send the message that we're going to be doing that
together
. That we're not going to let any kind of threat turn us into fairy versus gnome versus tightroper. Do you mind if I do those dishes? They're driving me crazy.”

Beckan and Josha look sadly at the sink. They nod a little.

It was a running joke, the sink full of dishes, because it was one of the most blatant examples of the bizarre routines that made everything bearable. Whether they wolfed down sudden feasts of food or licked yesterday's remnants off tea saucers, they always knew that they could throw their plates in the sink and let them pile high and disgusting, and when they woke up, they would be clean and put away. Because they had a sleepwalker, and their sleepwalker was as predictable by night as he was by day.

He was so harmless. He'd get up from bed, do the dishes, and go back to sleep. Sometimes he would dance a little around the kitchen, humming. Beckan liked to catch him at that and lead him back to bed. She wouldn't wake him up. She kept that a secret for a long time.

Three hours later, they have given up on all things serious and are rolling around on the floor, playing cards, when Scrap comes in from the bedroom. He looks exhausted and nervous and confused.

“Is he okay?” Tier says.

“He's sleepwalking,” Josha says. “He's all right. He never leaves the house.”

Rig watches him. “Does he do this a lot?”

“No.” Beckan is watching him too. “No, not anymore.” She smiles. “It's good. It's . . . Scrap. He's being like Scrap.”

Scrap wanders over to the sink. They giggle and pretend they're going to trip him. “What's he going to do?” Josha says. “There are no dishes!”

“Poor thing's going to be confused,” Rig says.

Scrap turns on the tap and reaches his hand out for the first dish. He grasps around in the dead space, opening and closing his fingers again and again.

They keep laughing.

And Scrap, fast asleep, leans over the empty sink and starts to cry.

There is a rush to get to him, but Josha gets there first, and he puts a cautious hand on each of Scrap's shoulders.

“Okay, Scrap. Shh shh shh. You're okay, buddy.”

Tier holds Beckan back and whispers, “Let them.”

For the first few weeks, Beckan and Tier did not talk.

It was a business relationship. Beckan knew that going in, but she had still expected to get a certain thrill out of prostitution, and all she felt was sore and lonely. Scrap and Cricket lived dangerously, bouncing from gnome to gnome, not knowing who they would have and who would be cruel, but Beckan, stuck night after night with only Tier, had nothing to fear from the nervous, cautious boy who made sure she always had a pillow under her head, who sometimes sobbed another girl's name at the end.

Eventually they shared a few words, the occasional smile, maybe a kiss now and then, and with the promise of food at the end of the night the sex became fine, nothing special, but nothing that would keep her awake shaking and sweating and whimpering in pain and fear like it sometimes would the boys. She enjoyed it as much as she
could and found other things to focus on. Usually, those things were the drawing of Rig and Tier's massive bookshelf.

“Do you read?” was the first real thing Tier ever said to her.

She was pulling her pants back on. She looked up.

And he looked down. “I'm sorry,” he said. “You always drift over to them. I only wondered.”

She bit down on her lip. Tier already probably thought she was stupid since she never talked. What would he think of her when he learned she couldn't really read?

“Fairies can read,” she said.

“Some of my books are by fairies.”

“Really?”

“Mmmhmm. Look at the names.”

She found the names of the authors and sounded them out to herself as quietly as she could. Most of the names did sound like fairies, but it wasn't always easy to tell. Beckan always worried, irrationally, that the hard sounds in her name betrayed that she was half gnome, that it took Cricket's litheness for a fairy to carry a name that sounded so fierce. Beckan was short, soft, solid. Names could be unfairly transparent, after all. She knew for sure that Scrap's name betrayed he was just a bit of something.

Tier went to the bed and shook glitter off the sheets. He spat a bit out of his mouth. “Do you know how much our women love . . . loved fairies?”

Beckan touched her hair.

“They'd do anything to have a fairy baby. They toss it aboveground and no one will ever care that the child is half gnome. They will call it a fairy and the thing will grow up to hate gnomes and live forever. Like you, correct?”

“What?”

“You. You're half gnome.”

“You judge your women for wanting to have fairy babies—maybe you should stop eating their kids.”

“Do you know your mother's name? Did your father ever tell you? He was a diplomat, yes?

She liked the way he ended sentences. She liked that he sounded uncomfortable. It made her feel powerful.

“My dad is a diplomat,” she said. “He's in a jar.”

“What was your mother's name?”

“I only know her first name. She's dead now. That's all my dad told me.”

Tier was quiet for a minute. “You're the last one,” he said. “The last half-gnome.”

“I know. There will be more.”

“There haven't been. Not for sixteen years. You're the last link between gnomes and fairies.” He laughed, once, to himself. Then he stopped. “What did you say her name was?”

“Spark. Dad said Spark. She's dead, right?”

He closed his eyes and said, “Yes. I . . . yes.”

He hurried to the bookshelf and started to read the spines, then he shook his head and said, “Take one. Take any of them.”

“What?”

“The books. Take whatever you want.” He forced a stack into her hands. “Take them. Take anything.”

Beckan shakes free and is the one to lead Scrap back to bed. She knows not to wake him up, but her hand brushes his half arm accidentally and it jerks him awake.

“Sorry,” she says. “Sorry.”

“. . . Beckan?”

“You were sleepwalking. Just bringing you back to bed. Don't worry.”

“Am I crying?”

“There weren't any dirty dishes. It scared you. Josha hugged you. Let's get you in bed, okay?”

She eases him between the covers, but he stiffens a little and says, “Oh, Becks, I'm fine I'm fine I'm fine,” and gets under himself.

He brings his knees up and tucks his chin on top. “I'm sorry,” he says. “Really embarrassing. I cry all the time lately.”

“Not really. Not as much as me.”

“No way.”

“I cried this morning because I couldn't find my hairbrush.”

Scrap laughs a little. “It's hard at night,” he says. “Everything's harder at night. Your friends seem nice. But angry.”

“You mean Piccolo.”

“Yeah.”

“Josha's angry too,” Beckan says. “It will be nice for him to have someone to be angry with. I don't even know how to be angry for more than a minute anymore. It's there and then it's gone.”

“I'm not even angry, just sad all the time.”

“Me too. It's harder at night.”

“It's so much harder at night.”

Beckan squeezes his hand. “I have something for you. I think now might be the time.”

Scrap looks up. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Hold on.” She runs down to the basement and grabs it from her welding bench. It's not perfect, but neither is Scrap.

She brings it to him. “See, see,” she says. “It's an arm. I made it for you. It has straps to go to your shoulder.”

Scrap stares at it, his eyes enormous. “Oh . . . Beckan . . .” he says, and she is concerned, and he says, “No, no, it's a good
oh
. Fuck, Becks, I can't believe you did this. I wondered how a hook was taking you this long.”

She laughs and helps him attach it to his shoulder. “The fingers don't move, of course. I'm not a genius. But you can move them with the other hand. If you wear a sleeve, it will just look like you have a metal hand, like the rest of your arm is still there, and that's pretty cool, isn't it? And if you wore a glove . . .”

He plays with the fingers. “I can't believe this.”

“You like it?”

And he grabs her, two arms, one enormous hug.

“Love you,” he says. “You're incredible.”

“You're gonna get glitter all over it,” she says. “It'll look just like your real arm. Wherever that is.”

Scrap is suspiciously quiet.

A throat-clearing from the doorway. They turn around, startled, like they were doing something wrong, but it's only Josha.

“Everyone left,” he said. “Help me clean up?”

Josha having the energy and motivation to clean is not something Beckan wants to scare away. She looks at Scrap.

“Go ahead. I'm fine. I promise.”

Maybe she doesn't believe him. But she says, “Don't let them get you.”

(They used to say that, bloody and ground down at the end of a long night, when there was nothing else they could take from them and no other ways they could be broken, they said
Don't let them get you
, like that would make them have something left.)

“I won't.” He looks at her. “I promise that I won't.”

“Sleep.”

“I will.”

“Nice arm, kid,” Josha says.

Scrap shoots him a hesitant smile, not sure if he's joking, and they close the door on him cradling his arm to his chest like it is precious, like it is perfect.

The next morning, when Beckan is out at the tightroper shops and Scrap is about to, like every morning, like every afternoon, go down to the mines, Josha goes to the closet in the basement where they've stuffed Cricket's things and starts rooting through. He startles when Scrap walks by.

“I thought you were gone,” Josha says.

“Just about. What are you doing?”

“Just looking through his papers and things. Does it matter?”

“That's my stuff,” Scrap says. “I keep it in here. That's mine.”

Josha drops the pages, quickly. “Oh,” he says. “Sorry.”

Scrap says, “I thought you were going to give me a break about this. I'll let you read it when it's done.”

“Like I want to read that.”

“Why else would you be going through my shit?”

“I thought it was Cricket's. I'm sorry.” He stands up. “You're going to the mines?”

“Yeah. Josha?”

“Hmm?”

“If you and Beckan were to want to get out of the city for a while . . . just, do you know how you might do that?”

“What?”

“I'm just asking. If you have any idea what direction would be the way to go.”

“The city's blocked off. Gnomes are lining the place, posts set up in front of all the gates, tracing the walls. You didn't know?”

Scrap freezes. “What?”

Scrap had not known that.

That had not been in Scrap's book.

“They went out there a few days ago. You need to get out from underground more. Hey, get cash from them and get more stuff at
the shops, okay? I forgot to tell Beckan I really want taffy. You like taffy, right?”

“Yeah. I'll . . . see what I can do.”

“How come you don't bring anything up anymore?”

“Shut up, Josha.”

A few weeks before he died, Cricket started coming home with twice, three times as much food as usual.

“Don't you wonder how he's getting that?” Beckan asked Scrap.

“Yeah,” Scrap said. “But it's probably some risky shit. Two at once, taking some of the syrups instead of the pills.” All the stuff that Scrap had told Beckan, before she had even gotten dressed that first day, that she was not allowed to do.

“He goes up to the ropes all the time.”

“Yeah. Hmm. Maybe he's tricking for them too.”

“Don't you want to know?” Beckan said.

“No. I don't.”

“I'm going to talk to him,” Beckan said, and maybe she did, but Scrap didn't and he never checked up, because no one has ever been as horrible at leading a pack as Scrap was.

(Remember to take that out in the final draft, that's stupid, I've got to stop making things that aren't about Cricket about Cricket. That's not even where that scene should go. It has nothing to do with anything. Remember to cross that out. Cricket, I miss you. I miss you so much, you stupid bastard.)

She came home
rather early that evening after Tier first handed her the stacks of books, tottering under the pile. Scrap had told her earlier not to wait up; Cricket was taking the night off, and he was pulling double duty to compensate. It had taken her hours earlier that day of wondering why Scrap wasn't angry at Cricket before she realized that the night off was not Cricket's doing.