Lanie Bross: Fates

He climbed carefully, never quite trusting the way the metal creaked under his weight, then pulled himself onto the small grated platform. Jasmine had leaned back against the bricks, one arm slung over her knees. A clove cigarette dangled from her fingers. He knew it was more for show than for actual smoking, but it still killed him. The smoke made its way into her clothing, into the couches, into his bedroom, even—then he went to practice smelling like a hippie’s ashtray.

She wore black skinny jeans and a torn, off-the-shoulder gray sweater, definitely not her usual club getup.

“Where were you tonight? I tried to call a hundred times and you didn’t answer. Remember our agreement?” He sat down hard next to her.

Jasmine shrugged, trying to detangle some of her long, curly dark hair, then giving up. “I was home before nine, if that counts for anything.”

She fiddled with the ring with little circle cutouts he’d won her at the carnival years ago. Then she took another drag from the clove cigarette, blowing out the smoke without inhaling it. She always fidgeted.

Their mother used to smoke the same type of cigarettes, though Jasmine probably didn’t remember it. Every time he caught a whiff of the familiar aroma, it made something twist in his stomach—half longing, half nausea. They were so alike, Jas and their mom—both thin and stubborn and always moving.

Sometimes Jasmine would say something or gesture with her hands and it would bring back a memory from the dark place Luc had buried it.

He rubbed his eyes again, feeling the exhaustion sink down into his bones. The accident. The fight with Karen. Looking for Jas. Everything seemed to catch up with him at once, just like after an overtime game, and he wanted to close his eyes for a week.

“So, how come you didn’t answer your phone?”

She picked at an invisible thread from her sweater for several long moments before she answered. “The ringer must have been off.”

“Yeah, but you could have been hurt, or …” His voice trailed off as he thought about the woman slumped over that steering wheel.

About the girl with those crazy eyes.

“Dead of boredom?” She pulled her phone out and made a production of turning the ringer back on.

“Wow, Jas, thanks for the extra effort.” Luc stretched out his legs on the narrow iron stairs. “You know, I heard somewhere that the point of phones is so people can actually call you.” But he was relieved. “Anyway.” He nudged her with his shoulder, “What the hell did you do tonight?”

“I rode the bus for a few hours.” Jas pushed him back with her shoulder, something they used to do for hours while sitting on the couch watching cartoons when they were younger. It became a game, who could get the last nudge in. “Some crazy artist lady talked my ear off. It was kinda funny.”

“Why funny?”

Jasmine didn’t answer directly. An expression—almost of pain—passed quickly over her face, but it was gone before Luc could identify it. “Don’t worry,” she said abruptly, stubbing out her cigarette, “I’m sorta over late-night bus riding now. Besides, I’ve heard the real crazies hang out under the boardwalk.”

“Yeah. And the serial killers.” Luc rubbed his forehead. He was still wound up. Jesus. He needed to relax. “Karen’s party is tomorrow,” he said. “You could come with me.”

“I thought I wasn’t allowed out after dark.” Jasmine rolled her eyes. “Besides, Muffy and Buffy and the rest of them make me want to puke. Seriously, Luc, you could do better than Karen. She isn’t going to magically make everything better, you know.”

Jasmine’s words—sudden, unexpected, true —shocked him into silence for a second. Jas was like that: flaky, fidgety, distracted one second and the next saying something that cut straight through Luc, straight past the layers of bullshit.

“I like Karen,” he said shortly. Karen was smart and funny and made him feel like someone. Any guy in his right mind would be in love with her. Most guys were.

“What do you two even talk about? Trust funds and Jet Skis?”

Luc could feel Jasmine staring at him, but he refused to meet her gaze.

“Karen’s super smart, Jas.” He tried to work up a sense of outrage on behalf of his girlfriend, but he was simply too tired. “She got into Stanford on early admission, remember?”

“Doesn’t her dad have some campus building named after him?” Jasmine asked. “That’s how it works with rich kids, right? They don’t have to earn anything. It’s just handed to them.”

“That’s not how it is with her.” He paused. “Besides, it’s not a building. It’s just a decorative bench.”

Jasmine snorted. “La-di-da.” She nudged him again, and finally, Luc couldn’t help but smile. He would never admit it to Jasmine, but sometimes, he felt the same way she did. He never exactly felt like an outsider, but the thought was always there, in the back of his mind: Different.

“Just come with me,” he said. “It’s on Karen’s houseboat. That’ll be cool, right?”

“In what universe is that cool?” Jas said, raising her eyebrows.

“It’s cool, trust me.” Nudge. “Got you.”

“We’ll see.” She leaned her head back against the bricks and closed her eyes. “Why not use their on-land mansion I’ve heard so much about?”

Luc shrugged. “Maybe they’re having the tennis courts cleaned.”

Jasmine cracked a smile. “Maybe they’re getting the vomit cleaned out of their pool from the last party.”

“The great thing about a houseboat is people can barf right off the balcony, no cleanup necessary.”

“Well, when you put it that way …” Jasmine laughed.

This time, Luc laughed with her, and they eased into a natural silence. He gave his sister a sideways glance; at certain angles Jasmine’s resemblance to their mom was striking. She tilted her chin up toward the sky with that same restless look in her deep-set eyes.

“Seems funny to care about all this bullshit,” she finally said, “when the universe is so much bigger than this … than us.”

“Funny,” Luc said noncommittally.

“Seriously, though. Think there’s life out there somewhere?”

God, she was so innocent. He knew Jas was attached to the idea that something must come after death. It was probably the only way she could handle what happened to their mom. “Not really sure,” he finally answered. “You?”

“Oh yeah.” She smiled. “It’s everywhere.”

By the time Corinthe stopped running—almost half an hour after fleeing the accident—her lungs burned and she’d nearly worn through the soles of her flats, even as the tiny firefly fluttered continuously in her palm, wings beating rhythmically like a miniature pulse.

Each time her feet connected with the pavement, spikes of pain skittered up her legs. There was no energy in this concrete place, no way for her to draw sustenance from the walls of brick and steel, the rivers of poured cement.

More than anything else, what Corinthe missed about Pyralis was the physical bond: the constant, flowing, physical sense of connection to everything and all. The energy in Pyralis was food; you had only to inhale to be nurtured.

When she’d first been exiled, she hadn’t thought she’d be able to survive. Her body burned all the time, as though every cell in her body had been ripped apart. She was sure the Unseen Ones wished her to die.

She hadn’t died, though. And ten years later, only echoes of that excruciating pain remained, a reminder of the penance she must endure because she had been too eager, too curious, too questioning. And though the pain never truly went away, she’d grown used to it—except in times of exhaustion, when the pain seemed to double in intensity and she was consumed by a craving she couldn’t name or satisfy.