Of Delicate Pieces (19 page)

She felt his hand find hers, but it wasn’t normal. It wasn’t flesh; she hadn’t felt mortal in a long time, but usually even as spirits there was compression, warmth, and energy between two people. Now his touch felt more like holding her hand out of the car window. She felt his lips press against her cheek and the same sensation followed. It traveled down like she’d dived right into that murky water of the painting or jumped out of the car window and into the breeze.

“I missed,” he said, kissing her nose, her hair, and her neck before finding her lips. She didn’t think those were mistakes. “You aren’t so uptight anymore.”

The sensation intensified as though wind billowed against the water. His hands pressed against her shoulders, her back, her head, everywhere. It was hard to explain where she was because she didn’t feel as though she was standing up, but she wasn’t sitting or lying down. She was nowhere; she was everywhere. But he was everywhere with her.

“What object were you focusing on?” she asked. Her voice curled around them like a smoke ring.

“You.”

They were too similar. No wonder their brains had a bridge between them.

“You did the same thing, didn’t you?”

She nodded but realized he couldn’t see her.

“No clue where we are,” he said.

In a flash—a gust of wind and a splash of water—it was over. Alex returned to real life with a loud
snap
, and she was stretched out on her bed, next to Chase.

He draped an arm over his forehead. “Why did you do that?”

The return of her sight made her shy. “I don’t know what happened … ”

“Al?”

“It felt too much like when we were knocked out last spring.”

Chase lifted his arm. “In the field?”

“And then after.” They didn’t wake up for weeks following the attack.

“I guess,” he replied, propping himself on his elbows. His eyes began to widen.

“What?”

At her feet, the box of Syrus Raive’s letters was now poised at the foot of her bed. She screamed and kicked the box. It tumbled sideways with a thud like dropping a bowling ball. The lid to the box moved back into place but not before the letters shuffled themselves.

It sounded like laughter.

Attention, like any other drug, was addictive. Tolerance built, and the monotony of everyday interest became humdrum. Alex’s name in the news no longer fazed her; she expected crowds to follow her down Lazuli Street. Addiction, like any desire, required higher doses to reach the fix of the high.

When Alex received orders to stay inbounds during the autumn festivities, at first she panicked. She’d miss the haunted house! She’d miss the beach parties in Moribund! But she discovered that the attention from those around her multiplied because she’d been singled out. Some newburies pitied her, patting her on the back or offering kind words of condolence about the importance of her safety, while other newburies crossed their arms and questioned why she didn’t have to work the Mansion of Morgues.

On the evening of the haunted house dress rehearsal, Alex followed Chase and his brothers outside of campus and into the city. The newburies were allowed to travel to Moribund through Gramble Station, and Alex tried to ignore the stabs of envy as girls giggled, flirted, and danced around Kaleb and Gabe on their way down Lazuli Street. It was also obvious that while Pax spoke to the Lasalles, she kept her attention on Chase. Alex tried her best not to show anger, and sunglasses appeared, shading half her face. Chase reassured her that she wouldn’t be missing anything besides fake spider webs and excessive headaches from all the screaming.

Ardor Westfall promised the time would pass quickly. He’d arranged a comprehensive schedule, including extra therapy sessions to her annoyance, but also special history lessons with Madame Paleo, some bonus language lessons, and personal training at some place called the Patientiam Center.

She followed her friends as far as she could off Lazuli Street toward Gramble Station where Alex noticed that the street post had either produced new signs or she’d never been willing to see them before. Several arrows extended from the thin post, one of which was labeled
Patientiam Center
, but they veered off in another direction.

“Where do you think you’re going?” a booming voice erupted.

Ardor Westfall stood among the redwoods, sturdy as ever, with his customary expression of derision. He’d swapped his military duds for jeans and a t-shirt but kept his combat boots.

“No-nowhere,” Alex replied. “I wanted to see Gramble Station. I’ve never been inside.”

Westfall curled his lip. “There’s another time for that. We have a schedule.”

Her friends called goodbye to her, and she watched over her shoulder as they disappeared through Gramble’s rotating door. Chase stood outside and waved her on, but he stayed rooted to the spot until she turned the corner, shivering in Westfall’s shadow.

She kept up, watching him beside her and twirling strands of her hair through her fingers. He wasn’t one for small talk, and even if she didn’t realize this, he formed some sort of barricade between them. She pressed a palm against it. Silence felt like memory foam. He probably sensed her questions and decided to mute her.

They came upon a building, plain in comparison to its neighbors. It lacked the quaint historic feel of Lazuli, the dark beauty of Brigitta’s stonework, or the powerful formidability of Broderick Square. The boring exterior of the warehouse offered no apologies, no bells or whistles, yet let off an atmosphere of pride as spirits entered and exited. It reminded Alex of Jack Bond, with its nose in the air despite its inadequate appearance.

As they neared the door to what was labeled The PC, a guy sat stretching his long legs on the bench outside. Everyone stopped to greet him. They offered hellos, and handshakes, and pats on the back. He might be the only spirit who received more attention than she did.

“Who is that?”

Westfall’s copper hair tidied itself, gathering into a ponytail. “That’s old Yazzie. He’s been around since the city was built. He comes here to workout at least once a day. Not bad for someone who’s been dead for four hundred years.” Westfall’s heavy gaze weighed down on Alex’s shoulders. “Don’t look so shocked. You wear your emotions like badges. Anyone ever tell you that?”

This came from a man who wore nothing but contempt.

Yazzie’s tan skin pulsed between smooth and wrinkled, and his black hair flashed to gray. Westfall greeted him with a nod and a handshake, but the man’s stormy eyes went straight to Alex. “The banshee girl.”

Westfall crossed his arms. “Her screams haven’t needed further analyzing.”

Thank goodness. Along with her monthly brain screening at Dianab, Alex also had to report for her big mouth. They worried she was half banshee considering her scream at the Eskers rattled the earth and immobilized everyone within a fifty-foot radius. The scientists at Dianab forced her to wail into machines, but she’d held back for obvious reasons. They canceled her last appointment.

Yazzie fixed his posture. “You don’t recognize me, do you?”

Should she?

“I suppose my cosmos costume was a little too good the other night.”

“You’re the storyteller?”

“You didn’t try to see beyond my mask.” He flicked the air, and Westfall’s shoulder flinched. “She’s still pretty narrow-minded.”

Westfall extended his chin at the building behind Yazzie. “Hence, our setting today.”

She had no clue how this building, this ‘health center,’ could loosen the girth around her mind.

“I saw beyond your mask though.” Yazzie’s hair flashed to gray again. “I always loved the way Sephi used to shine. You do, too.”

Alex didn’t know this man, but she already liked him. Comfort swam around him like a friend she didn’t know she’d been missing.

Westfall tapped his wrist, and a watch appeared. “Let’s go.”

They reached the revolving door and Westfall muttered, “Shine, he says?” Then he snickered. “Spirits see what they believe in, no matter how crazy.”

She couldn’t help herself. “So if Yazzie thought I was a bird, I’d take off flying?”

Westfall lowered only one eyebrow in a scowl that Alex doubted few could master. “Of course not. He couldn’t actually believe that. He’d know it wasn’t possible.”

Westfall stomped through a wall-to-wall waterfall of vertically rushing air. Alex scanned the entry, but there wasn’t any way around the world’s largest hand dryer.

“What is that?” she yelled, hesitant to step through it.

“A filter,” he bellowed through the blast of air. “To open your mind.”

“How?”

“If you want answers to all these questions you ask, this is the best place you could be,” he yelled. “You won’t accomplish anything unless you
step through the filter!
”

“What’s in it?”

“Just do it!” He spat at her through the filter.

She stepped through, feeling no different on the other side of the air curtain, but she didn’t voice it to Westfall.

Her feet squeaked on the floor, and she didn’t understand why. Dead girl shoes don’t squeak. Was she making that happen? Did she somehow expect it? She squeaked all the way to a railing, and beyond that was a crowded training area, far larger than the appearance of the building outside.

Westfall held up a hand to silence her, but for the first time in forever, she had no questions. She only wanted to watch. In the section directly below them hovered digital squares. The first had formulas for relativity and titles like
fundamentals
and
phenomena
. There were clusters of spirits below, some with pencils in hand, some reading and holding their heads in their hands. Alex recognized Kender Federive from the Ardors. She wiped her forehead with a towel and waved to them.

On one digital square, Alex read about the introduction to space-time and the concepts of wormholes. That tiny amount of new knowledge settled in her mind and spread through her like sunshine. She felt lighter.

Westfall rested his forearms on the railing. “Exercise is different now. This is how you’ll live to be as old as Yazzie.”

In different areas of the health center, Alex saw word problems or “group fitness” where spirits discussed concepts like physics or trigonometry, political science or astronomy.

“We aren’t required to do any of this?”

Westfall rested his chin on his fist. “It’s voluntary. In Brigitta, you’re learning to survive, and the staff learns your strengths and decides where you might belong.”

There it was again. The Categorization.

“Don’t tell me you disagree?” Curiosity brightened his being.

“Would that be shocking?”

He fought a smile; it was weird on his stern face. “Because your identical twin fought so hard to make this world what it is today.”

“Sephi did?”

He nodded. “Many of things she fought for died along with her, but the Categorization was something she created.”

“Why would she want spirits to be singled out like she was?”

“Think about what you said. Singled out like
she
was. It’s a brilliant tactic! She figured out a way for everyone to be treated like her. If she hadn’t died, I have no doubt the bodied would be down there working out with us.”

Federive’s blond ponytail swung side to side as she headed to a room with an open roof. Inside, tables of chessboards rose from the floor like wild mushrooms, and spirits crowded around them like gambling tables. Beyond them, stone archways formed a semicircle. Each of them was a different color door of varying shapes and sizes.

“What are those doors back there?”

“Past the gaming? That’s where people can learn to play sports. Basketball, tennis, croquet, handball, and they can play alone. The ballparks exist for recreation, but the games include mind-strengthening tactics. The newburies who flock to the fields don’t understand how much their minds are growing when they learn new plays for football or learn new skateboarding tricks. It makes them stronger. Some spirits don’t want to be watched at the field, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get the chance to play. Here they can play against computer animated opponents.”

“Like a video game?”

He dipped his head to the left. “Video games are over in that corner, but those rooms are like being inside the system. Gaming is still learning, and learning is how you strengthen your mind.”

It might be the coolest thing Alex had ever heard. She felt fortunate to be there, to be who she was, and have access to such things, such knowledge and understanding. She felt fortunate to be trapped between alive and dead.

“Liberating, isn’t it? Don’t you feel better already?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “When do we start?”

His forehead smoothed. “Right now.”

***

Alex figured she would spend the whole day at the Patientiam Center, but she couldn’t go full throttle for more than an hour. Her mind throbbed in a satisfying way. The trainers assured her that she’d build up stamina the more she visited the PC, as they called it.

She couldn’t wait to show this to Chase. And Gabe! He would love it. She jumped through the filter and left the PC, surprised to find that the building was now made of glass. Her reflection blinked back at her.

Yazzie still rested outside on the bench. His feet were propped on one armrest while his head rested on the other.

“Hey there, little bird.” He grinned.

No one else was around. He had to be speaking to her.

“Don’t mind the PC. It has identity issues, although it hasn’t been glass in a really long time. It must be feeling vulnerable.” He chuckled. “I heard what you said to the Ardor earlier. And if it means anything to you, I really do think you could fly if you wanted to.”

She believed him, but she had a feeling that once she went away, the optimism wouldn’t last.

“It’s not merely your face that resembles her, you know. It’s everything about you.”

“Sephi?”

“Your mother, too.”

Mother. The word burned. “Maybe one day I’ll find out.”

“She’s gone,” he said, sitting up. “I’m sure you knew.”