Through Glass: Episode Four (5 page)

My body ached, throbbed and begged for
sleep as though it had been days instead of just hours since we had
run from Abran and his men; days instead of just hours that I had
run with the heavy backpack pounding against my spine. I could feel
the throb from the bruises I had received from the so-called trial
I had been forced to endure earlier, my back aching as they had
grown and swelled with each step. Part of me wanted to sleep so
that I didn’t have to feel the pain, but another part feared the
torrential ache I knew would come with the morning.

I set the gun beside me and swung the
backpack off my shoulders, my hands feeling strangely stiff as I
reached for the zipper, my heart already thundering with the
knowledge of what I was reaching for.

It had been so long since I had looked
at his picture, the image of the boy I knew so well had been taken
from me when I had been captured. I didn’t even know if it was
still in the backpack. Everything tightened in tense heartbreak as
I searched for his photo, part of me not wanting to see his smiling
face considering the new plan that Travis had come up
with.

Not with the image of him turned into
something worse so fresh on my mind.

“
Do you want Nintendo Power
or Princess Castle?” Travis’s voice pulled me from my search just
as my fingers rubbed against the soft rolled portrait Cohen had
painted of the two of us. His voice bounced awkwardly around the
large, open abyss, the abrupt arrival of his voice sending my heart
into a thunder, causing me to jump.

The loud slaps of his shoes drowned
out the soft sounds of the fire as he came back to the small
campground we had made, obviously glad to be back. His hands were
full of what I recognized at once as two bedding sets, the kind
that had matching sheets and blankets in an assorted array of
trademarked characters. Sometimes they even had a duvet. I had
always begged my overly frugal mother for one of these as a child;
it seemed strangely ironic I would get one now.

“
Nintendo Power,” I
answered, knowing it would piss him off—Travis had always loved his
video games.

“
I’m not sleeping on pink
ruffles, Alexis.” He scowled at me as he spoke, the dark light in
his eyes so menacing that I wasn’t sure if he was being serious or
bordering on joking.

Either way, something deep inside of
me had ignited, a shadow of older sister playfulness that I hadn’t
felt for years springing to life. As much as I knew I should
probably leave it, I really didn’t want to.

“
Then why did you give me
the option?”

“
I don’t know. Obviously I
was trying to be nice,” he grumbled.

I gave him the biggest smile I could
muster and grabbed the plastic bag bearing the wide, cheesy grin
and perfectly coifed hair that the vapid princesses usually had,
the stiff plastic all but shattering under my rough
grip.

Travis only rolled his eyes as he
moved toward the twin bed I sat next to, using the large, plastic
bag to scoop as much of the dust that lined the surface and throw
it to the ground.

“
Just like old times,” he
said, and I couldn’t help hearing the rolling laugh in his
voice.

The sound was a mixture of the
annoyance I had always been so good at pulling out of him, and a
joy that made my stomach spin, the same emotion running through
me.

“
I guess,” I said as I
ripped open the brittle plastic bag, spilling the once soft cotton
on the dusty mattress. “Although I don’t remember ever having to
scrape off the dust when I changed my sheets.”

“
You obviously didn’t share
a bedroom with three boys.”

“
I don’t want to know.” I
tried my hardest to fight the eye roll. “I am just gad I finally
get my over priced, perfectly matching bedroom set.”

“
Why do you think I picked
them?” Travis asked, a playful grin spreading over his face in a
way that only made the wild joy inside me grow. It was a feeling
that I hadn’t felt in so long that I clung to it, in desperate need
of the way my soul seemed to swell like a balloon, the way the fear
didn’t seem quite so real.

“
They did have the old
patchwork quilts that Grandma used to make, but I thought for once
in our lives we could splurge a little bit. I
am
disappointed you don’t like
princesses anymore.”

“
Yeah, well, princesses are
a little bit twenty-thirteen…”

“
Giant monsters,
however…”

“
They are all the
rage.”

“
I think Jason would have a
field day.” Travis said the words so casually, but I couldn’t stop
the painful twist of my stomach, the way the pleasant balloon
deflated into an angry thump that ripped through my chest as he
threw the name of our little brother around so casually.

It was a name I had tried my hardest
never to think of, a name that I had locked away deep down inside,
though I could never rid myself of it forever. I couldn’t because I
could still see his little face so clearly. I could see the
menacing smile he always had, the way the evil glint would light in
his eyes right before he did something that he knew he
shouldn’t.

I could see it all because it was what
I had covered my walls with. It was the history that I had lost
myself in from the day the sky had gone black. From the day that I
had realized that everything had changed, and that there was
nothing I could do to stop it.

I could still tell you exactly where
each of Jason’s smiles were on the walls of my rooms. I could tell
you the stories for each picture, and the tales I had made up for
the unfamiliar grins that I loved just as much.

“
Yeah,” it was the only
word I could get out.

I didn’t dare look at Travis as I
pulled the fitted sheet over the old mattress, the elastic snapping
into shards of dried rubber as I secured it. I focused on making
the bed, on the feel of the cotton under my fingers, as I listened
to the crack and the pop of the fire. The heavy, painful pounding
of my heart returned as I tried to banish the memories.

“
Do you remember when Jason
turned seven? All he wanted was a superman cake…” Travis said into
the silence, his voice trailing off as the memories sliced into his
heart.

“
That showed superman’s
death,” I finished his statement without thinking about it, the
memory coming back in a torrent of heartache whether I wanted it to
or not.

Jason had insisted on the bloodiest
cake possible for his birthday, complete with blood and guts and
mass amounts of red frosting that our slightly hippy mother had
insisted on making with beets instead of the regular food coloring
stuff that she had deemed poisonous.

“
It tasted
awful.”

“
Jason didn’t seem to think
so. He ate it on top of every meal for a week.”

“
You do realize he only did
that to gross you out?”

“
Oh, I am fully aware now,
just as I was then,” I said with a smile, the memory not seeming as
painful all of a sudden. “Doesn’t make it any less
disturbing.”

We both chuckled together as I lay
back on my now freshly made bed, the sounds happier than they had
been a moment ago. While I could still feel the hollow knocking
that ate at the pit of my heart, it didn’t run through me in sharp
regret and pain anymore.

I had always hid memories in the fear
that they would destroy me, but now, having someone to share them
with made it a little bit more manageable. It took that rough,
sharp edge away.

I said nothing as I watched the
shadows of the fire lick the ceiling, the strips of yellow light
flickered and moved like an ocean. Pieces of shadow and light
moving in harmony as the fire burned.

It was so different than the shadows I
had seen move around the store.

My heart clenched in fear as the
thought I had tried to banish came back, my muscles tensing before
I pushed the thought away again. Instead, I focused on the light
that rippled over the ceiling, not on the shadows that seemed to
dwell around the corners of my vision. I lay still, focusing on the
memories that didn’t hurt, hoping that they would start to feel a
little bit more manageable.

Before I had even thought about it, I
had lifted my arm, pulling the sleeve of my jacket down to reveal
the drawing of my own face, the lines beginning to fade a bit, the
left side obscured by a dark, purple bruise I hadn’t seen before. I
knew at once where it had come from.

“
Do they do that to
everyone,” I asked in a whisper that echoed through the
darkness.

“
What?” Travis asked back,
his voice just as soft, as if he was afraid of what I was going to
say.

“
Stone them. The way they
did to me.” The words almost got stuck in my throat, the phrasing
so archaic that it felt out of place, yet I knew they were the only
words that would make sense.

The relative calm that we had found in
our shared memories seemed to vanish into an anxious fear at my
question. It tightened around my stomach in an uncomfortable metal
band that seemed to spread all the way through me, making every
beat of my heart hurt.

“
Yes.” His voice was tense,
the tension only adding to my fear. “They are scared. Scared of
what the world is. Scared of what you could become.”

“
What I am going to
become…” I was careful to keep my voice controlled, not full of the
anger that I had felt rush through me so aggressively. Even though
I had tried, however, I wasn’t sure I had succeeded.

I fought the shiver that moved through
me at the thought, pushing it from my mind as I turned toward
Travis, only to find him already turned and staring at
me.

“
No, Lex,” Travis said
calmly, obviously hoping to calm the fear he had heard in my voice.
“I have rescued a few from holes. Houses so run down that they
shouldn’t be used as barns. Hotters so hot they weren’t even worth
saving.”

I cringed at his words, the calm
mellow of it only grinding at my fear more, awakening it. It wasn’t
how he had spoken the words, it was what he said that cut through
me. It sliced through the steady calm and erupted inside of me, the
thought of the number of people they had destroyed, that they had
hurt, all because they were afraid.

“
People.” I said the word
more to myself than to Travis, but it had the same
reaction.

“
Excuse me?”

“
They are people, Travis,
just like I am a person. Just like you are person. People that live
and breathe and are full of life—”

“
We call them hotters for a
reason, Lex.” Travis’s voice was a growl as he interrupted
me.

I should have been worried that he
didn’t understand, but in some ways, I wasn’t. How could I be? I
was scared of the Tar just as he was. I wanted to make them bleed.
I wanted to see the sun again. But the way they talked about
hotters was the same way they talked about The Tar. And they
weren’t the same, just as I wasn’t yet.

Yet,
I reminded myself.

“
Is it for the same reason
that you call me a hotter?”

“
Lexi…” He was pleading,
but I just ignored him, my words rolling on as my anger began to
grow. I knew I should stop, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t let him
justify this.

The Tar had justified what they had
done and look where we were now.

“
Was I worth saving if
those people weren’t?” I shrieked, my voice tight as the volume
began to increase.

“
You are my
sister.”

“
And a hotter.”

“
I never said—”

“
It’s derogatory, Travis!”
I screamed as the anger boiled out of me. What little control I had
over it, evaporating. “Like stray dogs and 1920s segregation! The
way Abran spoke of it… and the fact that they were all ready to
kill me over it, didn’t help much…”

My anger began to seep away as I
continued talking, the bruises that covered my body throbbing in a
dull reminder of just how real their opinions of me were, and how
much Travis had risked to get me out of there. If anything, that
one thought took away the last of my emotion, and I sat heaving in
the silence as I looked at my brother, his own face relaxing as he
seemed to realize the extent of what I was saying.

“
I’m sorry I couldn’t get
you out before they did that.” His voice was soft, the apology so
heartfelt that my heart tightened painfully, my face burning at the
memory, at the pain that I heard echoed back to me.

“
It doesn’t matter,” I
replied, even though it did. “Would they have done that to Cohen?”
I resented asking the question the moment it was out of me, my
heart speeding up in a pitter-patter that echoed in my ears like a
thousand running feet.

Everything hurt as I looked at my
brother, waiting for him to answer, needing him to. Only to have a
soft chime echo through the silence. It almost sounded like the
wind chimes that our mom would hang every spring, the ones that had
the painted lilac blossoms on them. The ones that matched the
beautiful bush that used to grow outside my window.