The Dollhouse Asylum (16 page)

Marcus’s eyes rove over my eyes, my nose, my chin, and I can’t help but study the faint scars on his cheeks. The largest runs down the length of one side, almost luminescent, a pale, pale white. It makes me wonder how he got that one—probably battle wound of an active boy. Which leaves me wondering if Teo ever roughhoused, or if his olive-toned complexion covers up any scars he might have. Marc’s skin tone is fair despite his black hair, sideburns, and growing beard.

Marcus jumps off the counter, apparently needing to move around the room. Watching him pace across the tiled floor, I decide to try one more time. “So, Teo is like your dad?”

Marcus grabs onto the front of his hair and pulls it down at the side. “Pretty much.” I know that tone. Marcus is minimizing things. When he says, “pretty much,” he means, “in every possible way.” I know because I tend to do the same thing. Minimizing things is a coping mechanism. A way to handle whatever threatens you by making it small.

He keeps closing off. I have questions about how his dad died exactly, and how he made Teo turn out the way he did, but I decide to let them drop. We can talk about this another time, when Marcus is ready to open up. Besides, for the first time being here, I can revel in the fact that this particular boy has chosen to visit
me
. Not Cleo, not any of the other pretty girls from his school. It’s just Marcus and me, and there’s nothing preventing us from getting to know each other better, from talking.

Fully preparing myself to launch into whatever topic he likes, my eyes snag on the bulge of his bicep beneath his short-sleeved shirt. To think I’d been so obsessed with Teo that I’d missed
that
. Marc’s arms look like they could snap Teo in half. Now, if Jonas wasn’t around…

I scoot off the counter and try to decide where to go next. Marcus has planted himself halfway between the kitchen and the great room. It’s time to stretch out on the floor. Carpet would be better, but I’m not about to invite Marcus to my room or upstairs, so I move over to the hardwood and sit down.

An uncomfortable silence falls between us—no, not uncomfortable. Tentative. Marcus is careful around me. I’m sure that’s what he must be thinking, because he’s glancing around the room, then at me.

Eventually, he says, “Let’s go into the dining room—it’s more comfortable in there.”

I’m not really sure how he thinks a dining room table would be more comfortable, but I follow him anyway. He saunters toward the front door, slowing a little like he wants to be sure I’m checking him out.

When he veers left into the dining room with a little more bounce in his step, I can’t help teasing him. “Think you have an audience or something?”

He twists his head around and shoots me a grin. “Obviously.” I hate that he’s right—that it’s impossible not to notice how his pants hang just a teensy bit too low on his hips. But I quickly look away as I watch him move a few chairs to give us room to sit on the carpet.

“So,” I nudge him on the arm, “what do you like to do in your spare time?” I only ever saw him at the math meets or grocery shopping.

“You mean, besides playing dress-up with Cleo?” Marcus cocks an eyebrow as he moves a chair onto the hardwood.

I smile. “Besides that.”

“Well, you know I like math—that and literature are the only things Teo and I have in common, but he disregards everything else.” He waves away the “everything else” like his other interests shouldn’t matter to him, too. Minimizing again.

I wait for him to explain, and when he doesn’t immediately say anything, I nudge him again. “Like…?”

“Like—he thinks I should have gone to Khabela.” He sighs, moving another chair. “Says I don’t have the talent to pursue art.”

I feel my jaw unhinge. I can’t believe Teo would say such a thing. Well, I can believe it, but to squash someone’s dreams before they have the chance to try them is the mark of a royal douche. “How can he say that?” I finally ask.

Marcus shrugs again. “Says I study too much.”

“Teo doesn’t approve of you studying?”

“Well, the idea of it, yes. But the practice of it, not so much. Everything always came so naturally to him. The idea that it takes some of us a few extra hours to soak up the material is crazy to him.”

I nod, knowing what he means. I was the lucky one—had a knack for math—but my friend Josie didn’t have the same gift. She never did understand why I was in love with Teo.
Josie, like Bee, you were so right
.

“How about you?” Marcus asks, settling himself on the floor. His head smacks uncomfortably against the chair rail slicing through the center of the wall, so he slouches a little, and I decide to sit and do the same thing. Not that I’m as tall as him, but it feels good to slouch. No, this is awkward; we’re sitting side-by-side. So I move to the front of him and lie on the floor with my tummy down, cradling my chin with my hands. I kick my legs up.

“I really want to get into college,” I say, crossing my ankles, when a cry escapes my throat. There won’t
be
any college. The world is crawling with the Living Rot. If we escape, we’ll have to break into old college campuses to find our own books. I can see myself sneaking into the University of Texas wearing something like an astronaut’s suit and bungee cords, ducking in and around the Living Rot.

“The world is a pretty big place,” Marcus says with an extra spark of color in his eyes. “How many governments are out there? Hundreds? You’d think at least one of them would find a way to ward off the sickness.”

My mind reels, picturing more people wearing that astronaut’s suit. “But the coverage I watched took place in Austin. That must be the closest city. How could we get around them, if we could even get out?”

Marcus taps the vined wall behind him in thought. “The Gulf of Mexico is probably only a couple hundred miles south,” he offers. “We could get anywhere from there.”

I don’t respond. He has to know what a stretch that sounds like. Like catching a yacht to Florence, or Kiev—not to mention getting around the Living Rot. I’m picturing myself in those bungee cords again and foolishly seeing Marcus and myself using them as ropes in trees, swinging our way to the Gulf of Mexico like Tarzan and Jane. But Marc’s eyes are closed, like he’s thinking, with his head resting against the wall. I’d like to share my little picture with him, but don’t—he’d think it was dumb.

But I like what Marcus is thinking. Even if it makes me stupidly think of Tarzan and Jane. I always knew he was Teo’s playful little brother—I just never knew he’d subconsciously bring out that side of me, too.

“What I don’t get,” Marcus says, stretching his arms above him in the air, “is why my brother ‘rewards’ us with a vaccine when we live in a society that’s supposedly impenetrable.”

The question makes me stop. “You’re right. Maybe it’s his final defense. Like if the infected break through, we’re safe.”

Marcus’s forehead is wrinkling, but he nods like he’s not completely sure.
I
don’t know what Teo is thinking, and it looks like Marc doesn’t have a clue, either. But he’s trying, gripping the front of his long, dark hair again and scrunching up his face. When nothing seems to come, he shakes his head, letting his hand drop to his lap. “Do you know what you’re going to do for your party tomorrow?” he asks.

Part of me wishes I could announce this awesome plan.
I’ve already sculpted a Hades and Persephone scene
. But I don’t sculpt, dance, or sing. So I let my shoulders sag. “I don’t know. Bob for pomegranates?”

Marcus snorts this low-pitched sound, which is almost cute, when I notice a little box and wire peeking out from the bottom of his shirt. “What’s that?” I ask.

“What?” he looks down as if he’s spilled something down the front of his shirt.

“No, that,” I say, nearly touching the wire, but I don’t want to push his boundaries, so I don’t.

“Oh.” He leans his head back against the wall as if it’s nothing. “Insulin.”

Wait. “You’re diabetic?” I hadn’t had a clue.

“Since I was five.” Marcus shrugs. “In the scientific world they call it type one.” He taps the pump on his side. “I’m dependent on this stuff.”

A horrible thought occurs to me. What happens when he runs out? Does he think he has to be the
expert
on minimizing things? He should have brought this up way before now. I don’t know where to find more insulin, and I hate how helpless this makes me feel, so I slug his arm. “You should have said something!”

“It’s not like you can do anything.” Marcus rolls his eyes. “It is what it is.”

My mind is reeling. “How much do you have left?”

This is when the shrugging stops. Marcus winces. His eyes partially shut, and he turns his head away from me to the window. “About a week’s worth,” he says.

“But Teo has to have more,” I cry, suddenly on my feet. Where would Teo keep it?

“It’s possible,” Marcus frowns up at me, “but I don’t really know for sure. If you can’t tell, I try to do things without my brother.”

The air around us thickens as the air conditioning shuts off with a click. I must
do
something. I could run outside and make some sort of distraction so Marcus can steamroll Jonas, and then together we could search his house.

I’m pacing, just like I saw Marcus pacing before. But it doesn’t really work because the chairs he moved act like a barrier, blocking me in. I grit my teeth and walk to the window in the room. How are we going to earn the vaccine, escape, evade the monsters,
and
find a supply of insulin, all in a week? Part of me wants to disregard what Marcus just said, to ask Teo where he keeps Marc’s insulin—he
has
to have some. Teo thinks of everything.

But Marc’s sad eyes find my face. “Don’t worry, Cheyenne,” his sympathetic smile is so wonderful, and so horrific, my insides feel like slush, “we’ve got big things to look forward to here. Like throwing parties. And bobbing for pomegranates.”

At first I can’t respond, his last suggestion seeming to echo around the dining room—bobbing for pomegranates. An enormous tub, red fruit floating within. Seven men and seven women lining up to play the game. But the image shifts. In my head, Jonas dives in, frantic to win. And an absurd giggle escapes my throat. I crash to the floor.

It’s like Marcus is reading my mind, because he’s smiling, too, and before I know it we’re echoing each other, laughing back and forth, our knees knocking into each other. I feel like we’re chatting at the math meets again, but back then our conversations were always cut short. This is the longest we’ve ever had, and I don’t want it to stop.

“Chey-yi-yi-yenne,” Marcus sings softly, just like he did before, only it’s a reminiscence, a reminder that so much has changed. He’s sitting closer to me than he ever has before, his knee resting comfortably on my own. I want him to move closer, for the contact to spread. He’s warm and fun, like his arms are perpetually around me, holding me close, but allowing me to move. His hand brushes my leg, and I’m frantically clinging to this new idea of Marcus and Cheyenne, him and
me
.

My heart squeezes inside my chest, and embers of fire rush up my cheeks. He’s facing me, and his eyes are fluttering so close to mine. His lips are two or three inches away, and—

I look away. This line runs through my head where I say something stupid like, “I can’t.” Which means nothing, because of
course
I can, but it’s because he’s here and I’m here and it’s much too easy right now. I’m
liking
him, and I don’t know if I should like him. This is Teo’s brother and he’s warm and nice, but those are the exact things I thought Teo was. How do I know there isn’t something about Marcus that makes him the same?

Marcus leans back against the wall, the crown of his head hitting the sheetrock. He’s quiet for a moment—I can hear him scratching the back of his neck—when eventually he says, “So, assuming you’re Persephone and he’s Hades, how do you ‘prove your love’?”

This is exactly why I like Marcus. He knows how to veer onto another topic when things start to get weird. I could hug him right now; he just might be for keeps.

I take a deep breath, trying to pretend nothing happened just now. “Propose.” I shoot off the obvious answer, because that’s what Romeo and Juliet did. And Teo loved that.

Marcus jumps to his feet. “Wait—you doodle!”

I look up at him, confused.

“At the math meets,” he says, smiling, “you always doodle on your pad.”

Ah. I look down at my lap. “So?”

“So, they’re pretty good.” He holds his hand out to me and pulls me to my feet. “Almost gothic.”

“Please, they’re pathetic.” My foot’s fallen asleep, so I shake it out. “You’re the one who goes to the artsy-fartsy school.”

But he’s not listening to me, looking toward the back of the house. “You present him with a gift. A drawing. Of you, Persephone, kneeling in subservience, as if to propose.”

My stomach lurches; Teo would love something like that. He’s the type of guy who makes only the
women
dress up. “But where would I find the paint?”

Marcus beams at me. Veering around the dining room chairs, he walks through the great room to the back door.

I watch him, lost. Does he have his own little stash? “Where are you—”

Opening the back door a few inches, Marcus leans over to pluck something from the ground. He turns around to hand me a strip of acrylic paints.

I stare at them. “You planned this all along?”

“Luckily for you,” he places the paint in my hands, “I have resources.”

“But from where?” Not only can Teo play me like a fiddle, but Marc can, too? I can’t possibly be that gullible. And dumb.

Marc knocks my shoulder, playfully. “Knew you’d be happy.”

If only happy were synonymous with mad. He’d planned this all along. “Where did you get them?”

Shoving his hands in his pockets, he smiles. “Had them in my backpack. Like you said, from school.”

I try giving the paints back, but he won’t budge his hands from his pockets, and the set of paints knocks lightly into his chest.

“Nuh-uh,” he stares at the paints, “Teo could spot my style anywhere. Besides, my brother likes gifts that make an impression.” He turns to face the largest wall in the room. “I think you should paint your picture on that.”