Submerging

  ☼25☼

  Gifted

  I wasn’t sure how I lived through the rest of the weekend. Maybe I was on autopilot. That was probably it. I was on autopilot because I didn’t want to sleep afterward. Maybe I couldn’t sleep. I don’t know, because I didn’t sleep. That’s supposed to affect your memory.

  I didn’t want to go to sleep, because I was worried I would wake up and find that the whole thing had been a dream.

  I’d wanted to find out the truth, and the truth was, I couldn’t handle it.

  I was in love with someone I couldn’t trust, someone who had deliberately put me in danger. Someone who was in love with me, someone who knew me, and just didn’t care to tell me anything. Or work with me. Or be there for me.

  It was maddening.

  Before I knew it, it was Monday again.

  I moved through the day like a zombie. I got up late, after a fitful sleep. Since I was running late, I didn’t make it to Rachel’s for coffee.

  Gwen chattered with me throughout the day during our classes.

  I tried—tried so, so, so, so much—to pay attention and care. I tried to make myself like her more, think more of her, and care more about her.

  But you can’t just choose to love someone. Love both happens to you and you allow it to happen to you.

  My heart was upset with me for loving Starry Knight, and my head was upset with me for not loving Gwen.

  Finals were coming up. Martha was on a tirade about that. And Raiya was absent from class, so I didn’t even have her to distract me from my quiet suffering.

  Sure, I was all smiles on the outside, all high-fives and Game Pac championships and Tetris King. You fake it until you make it, when you’re as concerned with success and looking successful as I have to be.

  I called out from work, for the first (official) time. There was no monster to battle, and no evil to fight. I was just unable to do anything . . . normal. My life could never be normal again.

  Could it?

  It was only when I caught sight of Mikey, leaning against Rachel’s Café, that I felt some of my numbness leave me.

  But that was, of course, only so more pain could come rushing in.

  How was I going to tell him about Starry Knight? I wondered.

  Fortunately, as he looked at me, I didn’t think that was the topic he wanted to discuss.

  “Hey, Dinger,” he greeted me.

  “Hey, Mikey.” I waved back. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing. You?”

  “Nothing.”

  We exchanged glances, and I sighed to myself. I didn’t want to comfort him, but it was better than wallowing around in the filth of my self-pity party. It was the antithesis of my birthday party in my head, and I didn’t like it. But either way, any party should be catered by Rachel, I reasoned with myself. “Gwen’s coming soon,” I said. “You want to join us?”

  “You have little enough time for her,” he rebuffed.

  “Come on.” I gestured inside. “You can help me fend off Letty and Grandpa Odd.”

  Nothing.

  “My treat.”

  “Okay.”

  Well, that figures, I thought.

  “I guess it’s the least you could do, since you thought I was lying to you about Starry Knight, too.” He came up beside me. “Didn’t you?”

  I’d wondered if he had noticed before. “I do owe you an apology for that,” I agreed. “Boy, do I owe you one for that.”

  “You also owe me for not telling me about Dante.”

  “Dante? You’re seriously calling him that?” I asked.

  “You call your parents by their first names,” he argued.

  “I know, but my parents have normal-sounding names. They aren’t named after people who go through the Underworld.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’ve never heard of The Divine Comedy?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “It’s a book we’re going to have to read in AP Lit next year, if my sources are correct.”

  “I’m not taking AP Lit,” Mikey reminded me.

  I laughed. “Okay.”

  Normal started to creep back in after we started talking more. I didn’t mention Starry Knight.

  Mikey told me the few things he knew about his dad. None of them were surprising. He’d lived in Apollo City since marrying Mikey’s mother, and then up and moved one day. Mikey didn’t know why, other than it was because of his job.

  I filled him in on what mostly had happened before. I didn’t mention a few things about what happened the week Mikey had been transformed into a hideous monster by one of the Sinisters.

  I did mention how the mayor had hired SWORD as “security consultants,” and Mikey even laughed at my Mafia comparison.

  We didn’t talk about Starry Knight.

  Gwen came, and while she was surprised and not entirely pleased with Mikey’s company, she recognized that he needed us.

  It worked out well anyway, since Gwen got another text from Laura, asking for some help with the cheer camp Via had planned for the summer. We graciously excused her as she ran off to save her friend.

  I kissed her as she left, and even managed to make myself think I enjoyed it.

  It was only when I looked up to see Aleia tapping on the windows outside that I suggested Mikey go and study for his finals, since he didn’t want to fail.

  Once he agreed and left, I hurried out.

  Elysian was wrapped around Aleia’s shoulders like a scarf, with a lazy snarl on his face.

  “You’re up,” I said in greeting.

  If I had had trouble sleeping for the past few days, Elysian had it worse. Although, I recalled, I wasn’t sure if he needed it as much as I did.

  “Hello, Hamilton,” Aleia said with a small smile. “How are you feeling today?”

  “Fine.” I lied.

  “I can come back a little later,” she said. “If you feel it would be best.”

  “No, it’s fine. I’m just tired. Still.”

  She nodded. “Walk with me, okay?”

  We headed toward Shoreside Park. I wasn’t sure I wanted to head for the woods, but we eventually sat down on some grass, letting Elysian roll around in it like some kind of scaly snake-dog.

  “I’m going to be blunt,” she warned.

  “Okay.”

  “You made a mistake.”

  “A mistake? About what?” I asked.

  “Starry Knight.”

  “What are you talking about now?” I grumbled. “I didn’t think it was a problem. I don’t care about her, and she doesn’t care about me.”

  Aleia sighed. “I tried to tell you the other day,” she said, pulling out her memory bubble. “She didn’t make you fall.”

  “She admitted to me that it was all her fault.”

  “Well, that’s how she would have seen it,” Aleia said. “Look.”

  I pushed the small crystal ball away. “No thanks.”

  “You used your wish to come to Earth.”

  Shock slapped me out of my apathetic stupor. “What?!”

  Aleia nodded. “You were in love with Starry Knight. The Sinisters were under her power, but something happened and her power was unable to stop them from escaping.”

  I remembered the vision of the crumbling star from my dream before. “So she decided to supernova?” I asked.

  Aleia nodded. “You didn’t want to leave her.”

  “I was in love with her.” The pieces of the puzzle fit in together with blistering clarity. “She destroyed herself because of her duty, and I wished to go with her.”

  “You did more than that, and that’s part of the reason she can’t trust you anymore than you can trust her.”

  “What did I do?” I asked.

  “You wished for them to go to Earth.” She gazed out into the horizon. “Instead of going into the void, into the fires of Alküzor’s Realm, she was saved by your wish.” Aleia took hold of my hand. “You wanted to be with her, to the point where you risked everything
to do so, even if it meant damnation.”

  “Well, that was stupid,” I blurted, and she laughed. Probably more at my face than the actual situation, though. “But my wish is also what brought the Sinisters here.”

  “Yes.”

  “So it’s my fault that I’m here?”

  “Yes.”

  “But it’s her fault . . . ”

  For being the kind of person I would fall in love with.

  The story managed to wrap itself around me more as Aleia continued. “You were reborn as a human, with no memory of your previous life, because of your wish.”

  “But I managed to bring everything here.”

  “Yes.”

  “You like saying that a lot.”

  “I know,” she said, this time with a giggle.

  “So what now?” I asked.

  “That’s up to you.”

  “Well, I broke it. I broke what was left between us,” I said. Suddenly, the abyss of regret and loss came rushing up to me, and I felt my toes skim over the edge.

  “You have both been broken,” Aleia agreed. “But sometimes, because something has been broken, it becomes more precious as it is rebuilt.”

  “I don’t think she’ll want to rebuild it,” I said, wondering if I really wanted to try myself. “Besides, I have Gwen now. And Starry Knight even told me herself, if I wanted to be free of her, all I had to do was fall in love with a human.”

  “It’s not so easy to do that.”

  “It’s got to be easier than making up with her,” I insisted, standing up. “After everything that’s happened, everything she’s hidden from me, and everything before and after everything . . . I don’t know if I can do it, let alone if I want to.”

  She shook her head.

  “Besides,” I added, “Gwen’s perfect for me. She’s good, constant, and helpful. Simple. She knows me.”

  “No, she doesn’t,” Elysian spoke up. “She doesn’t know about you as Wingdinger.”

  “So what?” I bit back. “I don’t know who Starry Knight is.”

  “We cannot choose for you, Hamilton,” Aleia said. “But I wanted to give you the facts I had about what happened to you before.”

  “You could have told me this before,” I accused.

  Aleia sighed. “I am a fallen star myself,” she said. “And I am among the forgiven. But there are some things that we do not speak of. Some of us have taken vows, and we must keep them.”

  “Like Starry Knight?”

  “Yes, for one.”

  I snorted. “That’s the best thing about Gwen,” I said. “She can be trusted, and she can trust me. She doesn’t have to hide behind some sacred code or vow.”

  “There’s more to it than that.”

  “I don’t really want to hear it,” I said. “Are we done? I want to be left alone for a bit.”

  “I’ll leave you to your thoughts,” Aleia agreed. “Come, Elysian. Let’s give him some space.”

  The tiny dragon flared his nostrils. “See you at the house, I guess.”

  I nodded. “I suppose.”

  I waited until they were out of sight before heading in the opposite direction.

  I wandered through the city, aimlessly at first. The lost moonlight from previous days seemed to return as the day slipped away into the night.

  The truth was, I admitted to myself, that I was afraid. I’d been afraid (and more than a bit) when Starry Knight called my bluff and attacked me.

  She had already proven that she could hurt me, again and again, but there was something inside of me that kept looking for her, kept calling out for her.

  I was afraid I would lose myself in her, and even if it worked out, it would be more than everything I could have ever hoped for. Many people who live through life hoping for the best and actually getting the best aren’t that lucky, in my opinion. There had to be something more than even the best out there, and as much as I wanted it, I was also afraid of it.

  There was also the terrifying idea that I just didn’t want anyone to have that much power over me.

  She understood what kept me from trusting her, and loving her without that—that was just impossible. Love without trust was a recipe for disaster. And I had enough disaster to worry about. We both did, I corrected myself. We had a mission, and it needed to get done.

  But there was something even more important underneath all my objections; something that went to the core of my being, and as much as I knew I should be honest about it, I didn’t want to be honest about it. I didn’t want to look too closely because I knew looking at it would make me reconsider my stance.

  In the meantime, finding myself once more at Rachel’s, I had Gwen. I could love Gwen. I could trust Gwen.

  I could even trust her with the secret identity of Wingdinger.

  A small nudge inside my heart went off, but it was buried behind all the hurt and pain and restlessness. I would worry about it later, I decided. It wasn’t like I was going to tell her now, anyway. It was hardly the time, I thought.

  Trust was a tricky thing. I leaned against the brick of Rachel’s, thinking about Adonaias. Even he had been hard to trust, I thought, remembering how I’d tried so desperately to run away from him before.

  The door opened; I didn’t see the slim, scrawny figure make her way over to me until she was beside me.

  “You should go home,” Raiya said in greeting.

  “Nice to see you, too,” I muttered back.

  “Here.” Raiya held out the cup in her hand.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s a mocha. Your favorite.” She gave me a small smile before pressing the cup into my hand. “There’s no use making Rachel wait to lock up, is there?”

  I sighed, giving in. I reached out and took it.

  And then I almost dropped it, as a slight whisper of a touch grazed against her hand. Instinctively, I felt her emotions, and I nearly flinched.

  I felt a rush of concern and care, a gentle tenderness that radiated from her. It was strong enough that I didn’t need to double-check it, even though I did. I stared at her back as she turned and headed back toward the door.

  It was then that, for the first time, I realized how much she cared about me, and how just wrong it was that she should. In the blink of an eye, my relationship with Raiya—all her arguing, all her irritating habits, and all her teasing and prodding—was colored with new tones of friendship and hues of grace, contrasting sharply with the unfairness of my perception of her intent and unknown insecurity.

  Pain kicked into my gut, and shame twisted around inside of me.

  I’d been such a jerk to Raiya before. Maybe Rachel had had a point earlier, when she said I should be nicer to Raiya. “I’m sorry,” I said. The words were out of my mouth before my pride could object. (Not that it mattered that much; there was too little of it left.)

  Raiya paused, and then looked back at me. “For what?” she asked, her voice strangely hushed, like it was caught in her throat.

  I suppose she would be surprised, I thought grimly. It wasn’t often I said those words, let alone meant them. Still, my nerves were slightly grated. After all, did she really not realize how terrible I’d been to her?

  It was probably annoyance that caused me to shift my focus. “For not inviting you to my birthday party,” I told her. “You were right about the cake. The chocolate was my favorite.”

  She reached up, running a hand through the loosened locks of her hair as she avoided my gaze. I watched as her hand left her hair to reach down and grip the bracelet she wore around her wrist.

  While I like to think she was still in a bit of shock at my apology, much went unsaid between us. Even from a distance, I could see trace amounts of her emotions wisp around her, but it was her thoughts that went completely undiscerned. And I was more interested in those.

  Finally, she spoke again. “I forgive you.”

  I remembered how she’d responded to my teasing before, too; it spurned me how I’d been so proud and ha
ughty, and she’d been so uncharacteristically vulnerable and hurt, yet she’d still been kind enough to think of my cake.

  Anger at injustice burned inside of me. How could she just forgive me after I’d done so much to hurt her? How does that happen at all? There was a pause of silence before I felt my patience break and the question slipped out. “How can you forgive me, just like that?” I snapped, unintentionally appalled; after all, I’d intentionally hurt her, and I knew it.

  “Well, it’s just a party, for one thing, Hamilton,” she said quietly, surprising me as much as I’d no doubt surprised her. “And for another, I know I have not exactly made life easy for you. If anything, I should be the one asking for forgiveness.”

  There was a strong, confusing amount of conviction in her statement; I didn’t know what to say.

  The clouds moved past the moon outside, and everything dimmed; but I felt her look at me, and really look at me. There was a moment where I knew she saw me, and had no illusions about who I was. I felt a mix of dread and shame, and hope; and in the next moment, I felt the world change as the moonlight reemerged.

  I could almost see the cold darkness of her gaze, and I realized for the first time how she carried moonbeams in her eyes. I felt a rush of warmth and shame as I looked down at her mouth, shocked to wonder if it would surprise me as much as her eyes had.

  “We open tomorrow at six. You can come back then.”

  I straightened, keeping a hold of the coffee she’d given me and putting myself to rights. As I headed out, I turned and said, “I hope you realize, this doesn’t change anything. I’m still going to argue with you.”

  “Oh, I had a feeling that was the case,” Raiya assured me with a small smile. “I would have been disappointed otherwise . . . Humdinger.”

  I walked out into the darkness, in some ways able to see my darkness much more clearly. I didn’t think Raiya knew it at the time, but she’d given me a precious gift, even if it was a painful one. And it was excruciatingly painful—she’d allowed me to realize I could forgive Starry Knight for hurting me.

  It would take time. It would not be easy. But I would do it. I didn’t deserve forgiveness, not from Raiya or from Adonaias, and Starry Knight didn’t deserve it from me.