Something Of A Kind (26 page)

He deadpanned, his expression twisting into bewilderment. He
looked as though she spoke in an extraterrestrial language and grew
a third eye. “You’re what?”

“Not for you, and especially not for your job. No offense.” Aly
continued, ignoring him. “I’m not interested in playing games or
making face. I’ve seen that thing twice with documentation, heard it
a third time, and to tell you the truth, your people suck, especially
when it comes to investigation. I mean, Rowley’s cool-”

“The intern?”

 

“Inevitably and uncompromising,” Aly finished, “the answer is
no. Take it for what it is.”

 

A red line curled down his forehead, his neck taut with veins. He
spat, "Do you think you love him?"

 

Her jaw set. She straightened her shoulders, challenging, "What
if I did?"

 

"You've only known him for a weekend!"

Five days. Five days was enough to change everything.
"Then
why
did
you ask?"
she sighed, rolling
her eyes.
"Seriously, Greg? I can't tell if you’re really that manipulative or just
stupid. You can't ask the unanswerable and expect me to marvel in
your greatness. I'm not a child anymore; I don't revere the ghost of
my father to anything or anyone."

"I'm manipulative? What about this entire feat you’re pulling?"

 

She
groaned, covering her face
with the hand that wasn't
cradling her coffee.

 

"That's it then, isn't it? It's a hoax." He blew a raspberry,
slumping in the seat at her side.

 

She tucked a curl behind her ear. Leaning forward, she rested her
elbows on her knee, switching the Styrofoam cup to another hand.

"I'm going to say this slowly, so you can understand me, for the
last time. It is not a hoax, it is evidence that you can choose to utilize
or disregard, and at this point, I don't care. All I care about is the boy
on the table, in the room with the real doctors."

He swallowed. An Adam's apple bobbed in his skinny neck.
"You have my full attention, and that's all you have to say to me?"

She threw a hand up, pointedly staring at the ceiling as though it
could offer sympathy. "I really don't know what you expect me to
say. I don't know what you want me to feel, or do. I have no freaking
idea what you want from me. I tried. Now it doesn’t matter, and I'm
going to be okay with that, even if it's not today." Voice thick with
sarcasm, she finished, "You failed me, and I guess I failed you.
Funny, how life works."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"When they told me what you did, and then I heard it, and I saw
that thing... I thought for a second, maybe there was something there
I'd missed, something I'd given up on a long time ago: a genuine
passion for something bigger than us. Finally, a reason you left that
wasn't my fault– like maybe it wasn't something I did wrong. It
wasn't me. It didn't have to be me."

"Alyson-"

"But I know better than that," she muttered, bitterly. "It was
never me. It was you. So forgive me for not being smart enough to
forget about you like Mom did. She warned me, a thousand times. I
still wanted a father. I thought I needed you. I never did, though. I
still don't. I need my mother, or a real father, none of which you
could ever be."

"Then what am I, Alyson?" he demanded.

 

"Gregory Michael Glass," she said softly. "Just the man with
cold eyes."
~

“They said it looked like I slammed into a branch or something.
The entire situation wasn’t easy… describing. Jacob said he didn’t
think I have nerve or tendon damage, but I’ll have to see a fancy
specialist in Anchorage.” Noah explained. It was still strange, seeing
him gesture with one hand rather than two. While one ran through
his hair, the other was bound up in a thick navy sling, the shoulder
casted to
prevent the joint from sliding. “For the most part,
everything’s fine. I’ve got a prescription, and I’m not sure how that’s
going to work out. I forgot to ask about driving.”

“Need a chauffeur?” she ribbed, lifting her bag to her knees as
she sat on the edge of an untouched bed.

 

Noah
smirked,
managing
a
one-shouldered
half-shrug.
“Probably. Think you can handle the pickup again?”

 

She laughed, offering a look of sympathy. “If you can handle
getting that thing reset, I’m sure I can handle an automatic.”

 

He nodded, stepping forward to grab her hand, pulling her to her
feet. He said, “I’m sorry about today. About everything.”

“There’s nothing to apologize for –
although you can request a
formal apology from whatever sorry tree took you down.” Her
words were playful, but her tone wavered with an intake of breath.
Her heart fluttered, his thumb tracing her lips. He kissed her,
sending
fire
dancing
across her skin. Reluctant, she parted,
whispering, “I should get your jacket. It’s in the waiting area.”
Noah teased, “Don’t go far.”

Aly smiled. “Never.”

Spinning on her heel, she left the room, headed for the lobby.
After retrieving his things, she refilled her cup, grabbing another for
Noah. On the way back, the sound of yelling traveled through the
hall. A bystander in scrubs met her gaze, sharing a baffled, wideeyed expression. The woman quickly looked away, dark crimson
pooling in her cheeks at being caught eavesdropping.

Before Aly reached his door, Lee ran out, shaking with anger.
Nearly running into her, he stopped, a loathing stare following her
toes to her crown. He hissed, “This is your fault.”

Aly blurted, “Excuse me?”

 

“You belong on the outside, Glass daughter,” Lee warned, “You
stay away from my boy.”

As he shoved past her, half-caf sloshed from the cups to the toes
of her boots. Mixed emotions welled in her chest, pain and anger
swirling. Collecting herself, she prepared to brush it off.

Aly attempted to coax herself into entering the room as though
tension wasn’t wafting below the door. Instead, she stood in the hall
with coffee-flavored boots, feeling confused and two-inches-tall.

You belong on the outside, Glass daughter.

 

How dare you, Alyson Mackenzie.

Blinking, Aly peaked through the square block windows in the
door. He had a free hand over his face, his good shoulder leaning
against the wall. Glancing up with shell-shocked horror, Noah met
her stare.

“Well,” she said, “isn’t that something.”

 

CHAPTER 20 | NOAH

Glancing
in the mirror
pinned to the closet,
Noah turned,
observing the angles of the splint. He’d nearly bit through his tongue
when they reset it, his jaw still aching from grinding teeth. Once it
was in, most of it went away. A dull throb and the threatening
looseness of the joint remained. When he was still half in shock,
keeping the arm at his side was instinctual. Without the initial agony
keeping it sedentary, it had already gotten maddening.

Aly was the first thing that softened him since he had the band of
labels snapped around his wrist. With her gone, the annoyance was
creeping back.

He turned with a smile, the door slamming. Instead of promised
coffee and Aly’s beam, Lee stood with an unseasonable faux-fur
lined coat lining
his misshapen frame, covered in sweat and
irritation. With his gilded bolo tie fastened around the lapel of a
black polo and half-rimmed wire glasses perched on projected
cheekbones, he looked like someone’s hard-laboring grandfather,
rather than an angry brute with primed lectures sliding across a
tongue that never spoke silver.

Only rusted and charred.

 

Noah asked, “How is she?”

“How is she? How are you? You think you can go prancing in
the forest, ignoring the words of the elders?” Lee yelled, “You allow
her to affect you until you forget about your family. You forget your
brain. Now, you’ve hurt yourself. It proves what I say.”

Noah chuckled blackly. “You’re worried about me getting hurt?”

In a fluid motion, his free hand gripped the hem of his shirt. As
Noah lifted it to his ribs, he revealed bruised muscle. The center was
a harsh violet, the warped edges stretched through phases of reds
and greenish yellows, like an alien sun. Scratching the unwashed
pony tail at the nape of his neck, Lee raised his pressed-in brow, thin
lips crunching in a scowl. “The Gigit did this as well?”

Irritated and glaring, Noah replied, “No, you did.”

“I didn’t get you so hard,” Lee scoffed, crossing his arms and
resting them on his pregnant beer belly. “Your drama… blind, filled
with ignorance.”

“Yes, you did,” Noah insisted, an edge to his voice. His eyes
fleeted outside, conviction building as he saw employees in hearing
range. Gritting his teeth, Noah added, “You always do.”

Lee’s fingers, like grainy sausage, moved to cover his neck. It
was a nervous tick, self-conscious of the moles peppering his
windpipe. Noah recognized it from public speaking, when various
groups would congregate to the diner, sitting around a table and
staring up at him with sour expressions, expectant.

Finally, he grumbled, “A strong boy fights. It is nature, how we
survive. I make you strong. But you repay me and my wife with
running around with the Glass daughter. Was it not made clear to
you that the Glass man was not accepted? That he has intervened,
made demands, and fought to degrade us? You ignore my warnings,
you ignore”

“I haven’t ignored anything.” Noah argued, swallowing the
scathing comments that roused on first instinct. It was difficult not to
spit in the man’s face, to threaten to teach him the strength he
claimed to share like beating a kid around was a noble act of
discipline. The man was no different than Tony. Their delusions
were the same.

Noah found himself disgusted whenever he gaged the situation.
He and Sarah, Luke and Owen, now even Aly… they were always
shoved in the middle of their games. As long as he trapped in the
morbid world of Ashland, it would always be the same.

No wonder Sarah tried to get out. I don’t blame her for not
waiting. Even hiding, I always play in.

Spending time with a girl made him a disgrace, but how could
they not see how ashamed they ought to be? How could they all be
so far gone, embedded and crystalized in the dome around the town,
that this was normal, acceptable, pleasing even?

The crazies think I’ve gone mad.

“Ignored nothing? Of course you have. She is not one of us; you
bear no rights to her. There is a reason for the things that we do. We
take care of our own, we respect our people and we respect the
creature and our lifestyles. That is the way it should be. It is the way
it has always been.”

“Look, you don’t know her.” Noah defended, “You don’t even
know me.”

 

“You keep her outside of you, boy.” Lee leveled his eyes,
glowering as they slid into ominous slits.

 

“Oh my-” Noah stopped, his voice rising to a shout. He
demanded, “What are you so afraid of?”

“You are just like your mother, always think
ing you know best.
She listened to none of us when we tried to save her, and you know,
you know where she ended up. Do you really want that for yourself?
To die alone and young so far from your people?”

Everyone is losing their freaking minds.

 

Noah shook his head, disbelieving. “What the hell are you
talking about?”

“You are just like her, always thinking you know better than
everyone else, like you’re the only person that matters. It is selfish,
unacceptable. You insist on making her mistakes? Then you will die
as she died, and your sister will do the same. I try to help you break
this cycle, yet you disobey. I pay you, I feed you, you’ve got your
own bedroom, you live rent free of age in my house. You act like
I’ve given you nothing? You run off with an outsider, and you’ll be
in a motel when you go, just like my sister. We’ll get the news, and
my wife will be so sick, you will kill her or her foolish heart. We
don’t want this for you and you don’t want what we have.”

He gripped the counter, his head spin
ning. He didn’t know what
to spit out first and instant thoughts were muddled. Did he miss
something? Did Lee kill Mary-Agnes, was he being figurative? Was
he delusional, thinking Noah was becoming Maria or somehow
associated Noah as her son, instead of his own, because of Lee’s
opinion to mutual disgrace? He was losing his hold, the grip that
contained it, that kept him from prolonging the interactions. Unable
to think straight, he spit out everything in his head as it came, barely
understandable in his own ears.

“Whose mistakes? Yours? I’m trying to break the cycle of angry
drunks that beat their children, you sorry.… Ugh! Do you know how
sick you are, in the head? Dying? DyYou! You’re going to have a
heart attack or liver failure, and your wife is going to keel over from
her damn diabetes. Sarah and I are going to get out of here, away
from this sickness. She’s going to have a better life. I am going to
have a better life. Aly is the best thing, the cleanest thing, the most
right thing in my entire liferight now. I honestly don’t care who or
what she is to you. And I don’t know whose mother you’re talking
about, but unless you’ve murdered Mom since I’ve been out, she’s
still kicking and breathing, last time I checked. And nothing? We’re
dirt poor, always have been. I work for what I have, so I really don’t
see how you can act like you’re presenting the Taj Mahal with a gold
ticket. You’re damn right I don’t want what you have.”

Lee’s eyes grew wide, his feat of anger slowly fading, rather
than igniting with each spitting word. Noah expected to be on the
floor, through the wall at this point. He already decided he wouldn’t
put up with it. Not here, not now, in this public place. He didn’t
belong to the Locklears then. He owed them nothing, especially not
to bury their sins, replacing the mask. What was best for him and his
sister was the priority, and he’d live by it until the day of graduation.
If Lee wanted him to fight back, it’s what he’d receive.