Demolition Love

18. GRAYSCALE

  I step into the gray morning. Gray sky, gray buildings; the figure curled in a ball on the sidewalk in front of The Dance wears clothes so dirty they appear monotone. I know who it is before I get close enough to see the face. The Real Deal is not a forgiving tribe.

  The door of The Dance squeaks behind me, and I sway back onto my heels. “Tell me you had nothing to do with this.”

  “I had nothing to do with this,” Lawson agrees, coming to stand beside me.

  Beanpole guy curls further in on himself at the sound of Lawson’s voice.

  “Tell me the truth,” I amend.

  Silence, and that’s almost enough to tear the hook right out of my chest and find out how much of my heart it would leave behind, because these two were friends. Lawson just beat the shit out of the same guy who was going to help Lin and me stop the A from killing him.

  My fault—again—for confiding in the wrong person. I feel sick.

  “I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t kill him. That’s what you asked for. But I couldn’t let this stand. You know that.”

  “Just like you knew I wouldn’t defend myself next time when you helped me that day in the alley?”

  “I guess I thought that you might.”

  “No, you didn’t.” I press my fingers over my eyes, massaging hard. “Why do you even—? I’m an affront to everything you believe, and you…” I gesture to the guy on the ground. “We could never have worked.”

  “So you keep saying. Trying to convince yourself?”

  Instead of answering, I stare down at beanpole guy. He’s not tribe. He’s an anarchist. I don’t want to touch him…but I’ve already touched one anarchist. What’s another? Lawson hovers beside me like my own personal Mara, the embodiment of my unholy impulses.

  “Go away,” I say. “I’m going to help him.”

  I grab the bottom of my shirt and try to pull the fabric apart. The material refuses to give, and Lawson reaches out to help, but I back away. By the time I slip one arm out of the shirt, Lawson has already shrugged out of his. He tosses it to me and then crosses his arms, mouth twisting as I kneel down to wipe the guy’s face.

  Beanpole guy’s eyes open, and his gaze flicks between Lawson and I. He barks a laugh, which cuts off with a wince. He wraps his arms around his ribs.

  “Hey,” I whisper. “I’m Aidan. What’s your name?”

  “D-Dart.”

  “Okay, Dart. I’m going to clean you up. Hold still, alright?”

  I get the blood off his face, careful not to get any on my skin, then cast around for a safe place to put the shirt. Lawson is pacing, so I set the garment aside and begin checking Dart for broken bones. On his next pass, Lawson reaches for the shirt.

  “Blood,” I exclaim.

  Too late. He’s already snagged it. For a second he looks alarmed, but then he waves it off. “Think about it. He’s from outside. Their blood is clean.”

  “So we’ve been told, but he’s been here for at least a couple years. He could have easily caught something.”

  “You’re right. I’ll just go clean my hands.”

  As soon as the door swings closed behind Lawson, Dart opens his eyes again. His blood-slick hand grasps mine, and I try to pull away, but he holds tight.

  “We all do our best.” Like he’s used up all his strength, Dart’s grip slackens, and his hand droops back to the cement. His cracked lips shape three more words. “Blood is clean.” Then he’s unconscious.

  I stare down at his battered body, remembering Lawson lying in this same spot after being punished by the A. His hazel eyes pleaded with me to not let the GeeGee take him away, enough panic in that look to get me to raise a gun and threaten the Captain with it. But Dart is from outside. He won’t feel the same.

  “Guard,” I whisper, loud as I dare. “GeeGee guard. I know you’re out there. I know this is one of yours. Come take him away.”

  I realize what I’ve done and sprint for The Dance. The skin between my shoulder blades prickles in anticipation of bullet or blast or whatever death feels like.

  That mystery goes unsolved.

  Instead Sam meets me just inside the door. “Hurry. Council’s starting.”

  I don’t know why my fellow Bees keep choosing me to participate, and I’m about to insist Sam sit instead, until I see who’s already at the table. Tanner is facilitating, and Gina sits for the Cross Bearers, while the femme Lawson “tried” to make out with sits for the Love Childs. The knot in my stomach grows, and I rush to the seat beside the Logic Leader, Tara.

  “You and I aren’t friends right now,” I whisper, when Lawson pulls out the seat on my other side.

  In answer, he slams the chair back into place and strides around the table to sit beside the Love Child femme.

  I swallow. My fault. I lashed out first.

  “Council is called to order.” Tanner looks around the table. “For real, this time. We need Council to work, or everything falls apart. Today’s point of order: pamphlets. Go.”

  But with three GeeGee kids at the table, Council has already outlived its usefulness, and I can’t help but wonder what will get us first. The wrecking ball or civil war?

  I may as well be alone in the Ashram. Each day, the cushion of space separating me from the rest of my tribe expands. In the gap: Lawson, his gun, Kylie lying dead, and now this secret.

  There are spies in D-town.

  My fellow Bees have been looking at me from the corners of their eyes, but now I peer at them too. Suspicion drives me out into the streets, to talk to the teens with the pamphlets, to figure out how to identify a spy. I invite Sam, without mentioning my mission, but that one stays behind, still sallow-eyed and grieving, afraid of everything now.

  The trip is useless, every time. The GeeGee kids are just two-dozen faces of always happy. Not one of them has a unique thing to say. D-towners aren’t like that, not even the spies. And my respite from the A can’t last forever. Eventually, they will get bored, especially since its obvious Lawson isn’t looking out for me anymore.

  I round the corner and—

  Like a punch in the sternum while looking down from a dizzying height, there he is at the end of the street. Same messy hair, as if someone combed through it with wild fingers of shadow and light. He walks toward me with Lin hovering at his side, his head bent to hers, whispering secrets. He hasn’t spotted me yet or pretends not to.

  His steps are still tender from what the A did to him, what they did to him because of me. He’s still suffering for what we shared. Almost shared.

  Everything about Lawson and me is almost. It’s almost impossible to stay away from him. But then I think of Kylie. D-town is almost big enough to lose myself in and never see him again. Then he turns up on some random side-street. I almost wish I’d never met him, never loved him, never learned his name.

  Just like it’s almost possible to wish I was dead instead of Kylie. Almost possible not to hold tight to life. What is it about this ugly-beautiful world that makes us cling to it with the bleeding fingernails of hope?

  Lawson turns his head. Our gazes touch, like a collision in the air. That’s how it feels to me, anyway. Lawson looks how he always looks, shoulders bunched like he’s about to punch something.

  I still want to touch him everywhere, to drag my palms down the solid planes of his chest and kiss everything better. I can already taste the dirt and the tears.

  He draws even with me. His throat moves, very obvious because I’m staring right at it; Lawson swallows. He looks away.

  My eyes keep scanning his neck, checking for hickeys. Shameful, but I can’t help it. Fading bruises and smears cover his tanned skin like camouflage. Impossible to tell if he’s in love with someone else yet.

  For a second, I can almost see a different future. Me caring for him when age has turned his face porcelain white. When blue veins cover his skin, and my darker hands look younger and more resilient, even if they ache in the winter from all the times my fingers have been brok
en, even if my bones stick out in odd ways. Later, when the bruises have faded and the other people he’s made out with don’t matter anymore, after all this time, because for just about as long as we can remember it’s been us.

  Air bruises the inside of my lungs when I try to inhale.

  That’s is the most dangerous fantasy of all—imagining any of us will live that long.

  So I smile at Lawson, even though it’s too late, even though he already turned away. I should have smiled all along. Life’s too short for anything less than compassion and universal love. That’s what Kylie would have said.

  Days pass, grayscale, until one morning the GeeGee teenagers with the propaganda pamphlets just don’t show up on their corners. That night, the Ashram empties out at dusk. I stand in the entry, watching a clump of Bees shuffle down the street. They stick close together for protection, but for once that’s unnecessary. A group of As troops by without even yelling one insult. Everyone’s in a rush to get to The Dance and drink and hump in celebration.

  Lawson is sure to be there.

  I stay behind with Sam and Karen. Sam has been acting as door-person more and more often. Apparently I’m not the only one who sees a problem with this.

  “You know,” Karen says into the darkening room when we’ve all been sitting in silence for some time. I’d like to call what we’ve been doing meditation, but brooding is more like it. “I am perfectly capable of lowering a ladder.”

  “Yes. Of course,” says Sam, a soft smile in the words. That one knows what the Lama is really saying. “But there are three ladders. Three might strain your spine.”

  This is a new Sam, humorous and self-aware. Maybe that one is recovering better than I thought.

  Karen chuckles. “I’m not going to make you leave, Sam, but I think it would do you good to get outside.”

  Sam glances at me, and I nod encouragement.

  “I’ll walk you over and then come back and help the Lama with the ladders.”

  “You go too, Aidan,” Karen says. “I know what you’re doing in here, and you’re no better at it than Sam. You can’t heal grief this way. You have to be able to face the world.” The Lama’s voice softens. “Face him.”

  But you don’t understand. It’s not that I can’t face him. It’s that if I come close enough to touch him, I will wrap my arms around him and never be able to let go.

  I wet my mouth, but the decision to go has already settled in my stomach. This is my chance to see Lawson. To feast my eyes on the way his hair curls around his cheeks. That jaw. Those shoulders. His trim hips. My opportunity to stare across The Dance and torture myself if he’s with someone else.

  Maybe Lawson has a point. Maybe I do like to suffer.

  My mind chews on this until Sam stops me a couple blocks from The Dance.

  “I only agreed to go because I want to talk to you,” Sam says. “Alone.”

  We have the dark street to ourselves. Everyone else is already at The Dance. The nerves in my stomach pull tighter as Sam struggles for words.

  “I don’t—I don’t know how to—”

  My hands ball up, and I hide them behind my back before Sam sees.

  “I just want you to know that I—you stayed away from the Real Dealer so I—forgive you.”

  My throat convulses. Relief should flood through me now. I stand waiting for a weight to lift, but instead my stomach sinks further.

  “That’s great, Sam, thanks,” I mumble, sounding like a G-spot as I reach out and give a halfhearted hug.

  The ragged fingernails tear loose from a hope I didn’t realize I still sustained, that someday Lawson and I could… That impossible wish falls away, leaving me with nothing but Sam’s conditional forgiveness.

  I start off down the street, trying to seem normal but really just stumbling along at Sam’s pace until we’re inside The Dance. The hot air, reeking of B.O. and vomit, pulls me out of my stupor enough to press my sleeve over my nose as we line up at the bar.

  Someone has stolen buckets of beer. Or maybe “mead”? Either way, the stream of kids staggering outside to puke makes me glad Bees don’t drink. I’ll stick with soda.

  In the shifting crowd, Sam and I get separated. I end up lodged between a Love Child and an A too intent on making out to notice that I’m in the way. I try to slip around him—he’s in front—but he shoves me back.

  “No cutting!”

  I let her go ahead so they can be together without me in the middle and, because good deeds are never rewarded, I end up back to back with Lawson. He’s facing Lin. All I can see of her over his shoulder are the shocking red spikes of her hair. I whip my head back around before she can catch me looking.

  There’s nowhere to go in the press of bodies. Which is lucky, because I’d look like an idiot standing pressed against Lawson’s back in the middle of an empty room, and there’s no way I can move. Not with his sweat soaking into my shirt. It doesn’t matter that a minute ago I was too hot. It doesn’t matter that Sam could happen by any moment and un-forgive me.

  Well, it matters. Just not enough apparently. Air gathers in my throat, wanting to escape in a sob of relief as Lawson’s back moves against mine with the gentle rhythm of his breath. My stomach flips each time he shifts his feet. Has he turned? Does he know it’s me? My only salvation is facing front, pretending I haven’t noticed.

  “You’re no fun anymore,” Lin’s voice shouts above the noise.

  When Lawson speaks, he sounds lost in thought. His body vibrates with the rumble of his words. “Remember when I got to D-town? You told me you were an Anarchist. Do you remember that?” Maybe Lin speaks; maybe she doesn’t. Even The Dance fades from my awareness. All that matters is the catch in Lawson’s voice. “I said I was that too, and you—you promised I wouldn’t be sorry.”

  He sounds sorry now.

  “Oh, sweetie. You have to stop moping.” Something brushes the back of my skull; she must have wrapped her arms around his neck. She says, “You’re so warm.”

  “Yeah, sorry about the sweat.”

  Don’t be.

  The line in front of me moves, but I can’t break that last decadent bit of contact I never dreamed I’d have again.

  “Come dance with me,” Lin says.

  “I can’t stay long. I have an appointment. Check on Tab later?”

  Appointment? This is D-town, not Three Street. We don’t have appointments.

  There’s movement behind me. I glance to the side, and there he is again, doing a double-take as our eyes meet. His lips part—to speak or breathe—but Lin has hold of his hand. She pulls him away, swaying her hips to the beat. Her black jeans and red tank cling to curves and muscle, the body of a Real Dealer femme, so unlike mine. Some guy gropes her, and Lawson whirls like he has a sixth sense for that sort of thing.

  Not that Lin needs help.

  The guy is already backing off, hands up. “Woah! Take it easy.”

  I turn and flee for the door, hardly noticing when people grumble at me for skipping in line. They’re too nauseated to make an issue of it, and The Dance is safe space. I burst outside and collapse against the wall, gulping night air and wiping sweat off my face.

  My foot slides toward the door, but I yank it back. I’m standing where I told Lawson it was over between us, so I shift to the other side of the door. A moment later, two people burst out of The Dance and collapse over there, puking. I avert my gaze and squint out at the misshapen shadows.

  An unfamiliar dark shape looms over the square. A giant arm reaches into the sky, holding up a black moon. The wet cotton plastered to my chest chills in sudden recognition.

  A wrecking ball.

  The first thing I do is check for guards but, besides the upchucking kids, the night is unbroken by movement. I walk across the pavement to the crane, reach for the door handle, and pause when no one tries to stop me. Odd, so odd.

  Again, I waver in shock when the door turns out to be unlocked. Something is off about this, but I can’t stop now. It’s
a giant hop to get up inside the cab. No interior light. I feel around, ignoring dust and grit and personal possessions.

  In the dirty space behind the seat, I find new hope. A bag of handcuffs—meant to hold us, no doubt—and four sets of emergency snow chains.