Something Of A Kind (21 page)

He stood back and pinched the bridge of his nose, taking deep
breaths and swallowing repeatedly.

"This is my job. My life's work. I know that doesn't mean
anything to you, but it's my everything. This is a cut-throat field, and
if you insist you’re not a child, then you should comprehend how
negative it is to be made a fool by one."

"You're making a fool
of
yourself," she snapped, scooping
photographs back into the manila folder and waving it in front of his
face. "This is the evidence that you actually have. Pure proof that
you aren't a completely lunatic, and because you're so arrogant, you
won't even consider it."

"Of course I consider it!" Greg spat, ripping it from her hands.
"Don't you think it's a little odd that you have been in Alaska less
than a week and you have found more 'evidence' than most of our
organization in as long as you've been alive? Or how about the fact
that trained scientists, Ph. D. level field biologists, have deduced it
as a hoax. Even our internist thinks it's fake. In science, there's
something called too good to be true, you ever heard of it? Maybe
next time you and whatever the hell you call friends pull something
you won't go so overboard. Maybe try a little more vague, huh?
Leave something to the damn imagination."

"Noah, Luke, and Owen are all natives from this res and-"

 

"Res? Res? You have their slang now? That isn’t even
factitiously accurate-"

"Shut up for one second," she demanded. "Their ancestors have
been reporting this stuff for over a century. An elder actually told us
where it would be. Somewhere, according to you, you don't even go
because it's unlikely."

"You've been hanging out with Locklear, huh? That's really
funny, no seriously, you have me laughing." Throwing the folder
into the trash, he splattered yogurt and used tissues. "Did he happen
to tell you that his brothers were caught altering the results of a
quarantined investigation?"

She paused, attempting to gauge the legitimacy of his words.
She felt her lips move slowly, unable to slam a response. Her words
stumbled as she replied, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"We have them on motion-signaled cameras, Alyson. The elders
and the organization have been trying to mend ties for months
because of what those boys did. We've been working with those
ancestors for decades. You've known that child for less than a week,
and the boy already has you out of your mind. I'm not the one
'messing' with people, Alyson. Three teenage boys? They probably
think it's the funniest damn thing in the world. The Locklears are a
bunch of hooligan drunks, and Noah's no exception. You see this?
The chances of it not being completely planted are nonexistent. It
looks exactly like the other crap. I'm shocked you didn't see this.
Considering you obviously know everything if you're going to come
in here and tell people three and four times your age how to do their
job. Do you understand what seasoned professionals mean? A damn
long time. I-"

He continued to speak, his voice low, angered, and controlling.
Blood pounded in her ears as he reached across her, snatching a
remote from the top of a stack of Forbes and flicking on a flatscreen. He scrolled through a standard black and white menu,
pulling up a file slideshow almost identical to hers. Each slide was a
punch in the stomach, and by the time he started the video she
struggled to breath. She turned away, a thousand doubts rushing into
her throbbing head. He stopped, confused at the tears brimming her
lids, and seemed confused.

"I..." Greg paused, scrutinizing her, "I didn't realize you were so
convinced. I am sorry. I'm pulling the files. No one needs to know
about this. You're a minor, so it's relatively unaffiliated.I shouldn’t
think it will affect lifelong credibility, although any further reports…
well, that I can’t say."

He moved passed her, retreating like a kicked dog that won the
fight, down a curving hallway. In his wake overwhelming waves of
Pinesol flooded her burning nose. He left the images of faux print
casts and profile silhouettes labeled ‘John Locklear’ scrolling.

Of course it was too easy. Him, me. Us. Always laughing.

She suddenly wanted to blame Noah, to pin the humiliation and
lies on his head. Everything was always so funny, so easy. Was she a
joke? Was that ease calculation?

No.

She couldn't deal with it. She knew in the core of her chest she
hated Greg. For leaving her, for stringing her along, for snapping her
in half when she made herself strong enough to break. For shaming
her, for weaseling inside her head, for trying to make himself a
martyr in the face of her pain.

Aly longed for her mother, an embrace, the perfect words to heal
her wounds. To have a lock of hair tucked behind her ear, a joke that
harrowed and weakened sorrow, or shared dreams of wandering the
whimsy of Paris.

Her mother's choices to condemn Greg's passions as ridiculous
weren't
unfathomable.
Despite
the
separation,
despite
her
overworked absence, despite allowing Aly to idolize the figure of
the vacant father, despite dying when she was needed most, Aly
desperately loved her.

She knew what her mother would do. She would weed doubts
into Greg's doubts. Aly would lay in the grave she dug herself until
Vanessa lifted her out, a spineless rag doll, and dusted her off. She
would help Aly into her coat like she couldn't find the arm holes,
smear away tears that smeared mascara, and dare her to find the
truth.

A dare made the brave.

Aly rose from her chair, breaking into a run for the lobby doors.
As though she were still in Kingsley, she expected the buzzing
stickiness of a hot night to greet her. Instead, the pressure of a
temperature drop followed her into the street. The sky was nearly
black without city lights, instead bathing Ashland with the glow of
the moon and the stars.

Tears still falling, pain and loneliness swelling and clenching in
her chest, she slowed to a stop. Adjusting eyes grasped for her target
along the road, scrutinizing the shaded storefronts. With the cool
ground more solid with each step, she was walking.

In the distance, she could see the flicker of Yazzie's fluorescents.

 

CHAPTER 14 | NOAH

Noah preferred his family interactions limited to checking in on
his sister, avoiding his brothers, and appeasing his mother with as
much marginal distance as possible. Mary-Agnes had problems, but
she rarely hurt anyone unless Andrew or John crossed her. Her
issues were more sad than terrifying. She was sweet at heart, even
dazed and self-loathing, her actions expressed in trying to make
Isaac cheerful and Mark laugh. Behind the issues, she was a mother
– his, theirs, and messed up – but still a mother. It was his father that
he wanted no closer than arm’s length.

Noah wanted to spend the night like he spent any other. There
were chores, then scavenging for dinner when the kitchen emptied,
and a late-night shower. After, he would lay in bed with blaring
headphones trying to decipher the world of Alyson Glass or sit on
the widow’s walk and play guitar until someone complained or he
couldn’t see the hand before his face.

He never fought for the television. He never asked for anything.
He was out of their business and he was out of theirs. The silent
covenant had been working just fine. By zipping his lip, making sure
everything was secure, and begrudgingly avoiding Tony under Lee’s
repeated demands, he remained off his father’s radar – and so did
Aly.

Over his shoulder, Noah watched his footing. On and off
drizzling had made traveling across the sloping cement a dicey task
in general – but the dark made it an easy fall. Backing down the
driveway, he dragged the massive trashcans with him. Shakes of
adrenaline were only beginning to fade. He was still trying to calm
down after the fight.

Luke and Owen had snitched like a pair of rats. The second they
walked in Hunt’s door, Rolland dragged everything out of them.
How he spent his days with Alyson Glass, sharing the hush-hush
legends from the sacred no-one-cares middle-of-nowhere
and
blowing his paycheck on gas so he could pick her up like a convict
they'd made him. How he had admitted, yes, the researcher’s
daughter was his girlfriend, and yes, he did take her into the woods
and intentionally provoke the beast of the woods.

It was in the open, sprayed across the table. His actions, his
desires, his recklessness– it was all warped around the girl in the
boots, the something he’d desperately protected from the elder’s
claws. His association was distorted into a perversion. Skeletons
burst from the closet, femurs and phalanges thrown in his father’s
face. Everything he had done was dropped into the worst possible
light, using visceral words that stroked Lee’s ego while dramatizing
Noah into a family-shaming liar.

Noah never understood how Owen’s father could make them
belly-up so fast. Besides a taut face and nasty bark, the guy was
weak. Skinny and long-haired with the constant odor of marijuana
and liquor, he catered to his wife’s prescription consumption as
though it wasn’t killing her – like she didn’t drag so-called-mutualfriend men home when he was working late on the roads or passed
out somewhere, like she didn’t beat on Owen, who in following
Rolland’s footsteps refused to run or defend himself against the
woman in spite of being as big as a Viking-Gladiator-Pirate.

Rolland was just like Lee
– an addict with self-gratifying tunnelvision. Their so-called
accomplishments of
disciplining
their
offspring, working in misery, and participating in morbid spouseenabling wiped their sins clean, revering them to all of Ashland –
justification by association, never questioned.

It was sickening, the cycle. John, Andrew, Isaac, and maybe
even Mark… they would all become Lees, just like Lee and had
become Grandfather Yazzie. Noah knew he never would, just like he
knew he could never let Sarah become Aunt Maria – or worse,
MaryAgnes. At least Maria had fought to break free. He didn’t
know if the poison was in the alcohol, the gene-pool, or just
Ashland. Noah felt it when Lee spat in his face. It radiated from the
man as he threw Noah into a booth, screaming and shaking with
accusations. His father’s words shredded the walls he brought up
around him. He almost lost it on the spot.

His father said Noah’s greatest disgrace is that he denied
nothing, shameless. Lee was right. Noah refused to feel that it was
wrong, refused to say so, refused to appease a man who he had no
respect for. After landing a fist in his stomach, his father stumbled –
gripping the sides of a table to catch himself. Afterwards, he pointed
to the door, demanding Noah get out of sight until after everyone
was sleeping. Punishment would follow in the morning.

When the bastard was sober enough to think.

Noah felt the anger rising again, flooding his lungs, welling in
his chest. He stopped, wiping his hands on his jeans and lifting his
shirt. It was as contused as Aly’s leg, swollen and dark. The sight
was a reminder of the throbbing nausea that followed the fist,
knocking the wind out of him.

He wondered why he had stifled the urge to grab the old man’s
wrist and kick him to the ground. At first, he was sure it’d make it
worse. His brothers would come after him or Lee would be too
drunk to retreat. It was something else that stopped him, though.

Noah hated getting violent, feeling like he could see himself as
Lee, dominating and brutal. Still, sometimes he felt it in every nerve,
the rage overwhelming. He wanted to let go. For a second, he
imagined himself beating the man to oblivion – a luxury he couldn't
afford. Realizing he was getting himself worked up again, he shook
himself, taking a deep breath of night.

I'm not like them. I won't be that guy.

Grinding his teeth, he grabbed the trashcans, circling the house
to the parking lot. As he reached the curb, an awful sound made him
jump. The
whimper
was heartbreaking. Almost
sure
he
had
imagined it, he turned slowly, wiping his hands against each other to
free the residue left on the bin’s lid from the rains.

He frowned, confused and concerned. Aly stood in front of him;
bad leg bent slightly, her arms were crossed. She trembled, her eyes
filled with tears. From the audible quiver in her breath, he knew she
was trying to stay calm.

She said softly, “Tell me it’s not true.”

His first thought that it was over. She had found something
–
something she couldn’t understand was scaring her away. Part of
him knew it would happen. He’d prayed the thought was a reflex,
just him trying to stop himself from getting hurt – like he was
protecting himself, trying not to get hopes up– the subconscious
failsafe for the abuser’s son. The universe
was righting itself,
starting with his secrets aired out for Lee, following with the end of
the best summer of his life.

Girls like that don’t happen to poor kids with drunkard parents.

 

“Wait…” he blinked, internalizing his panic attack. “What?”

“Were you messing with me?” she whispered, voice cracking.
She swallowed, eyelids fluttering as though the tears would go away.
Instead, they spilled. “Today, yesterday, Friday – the campfire, the
tunnels, the rock, the trails… It was all a joke. You guys were
screwing with me?”