“You like it?”
And he grabs her, two arms, one enormous hug.
“Love you,” he says. “You’re incredible.”
“You’re gonna get glitter all over it,” she says. “It’ll look just like your real arm. Wherever that is.”
Scrap is suspiciously quiet.
A throat-clearing from the doorway. They turn around, startled, like they were doing something wrong, but it’s only Josha.
“Everyone left,” he said. “Help me clean up?”
Josha having the energy and motivation to clean is not something Beckan wants to scare away. She looks at Scrap.
“Go ahead. I’m fine. I promise.”
Maybe she doesn’t believe him. But she says, “Don’t let them get you.”
(They used to say that, bloody and ground down at the end of a long night, when there was nothing else they could take from them and no other ways they could be broken, they said Don’t let them get you, like that would make them have something left.)
“I won’t.” He looks at her. “I promise that I won’t.”
“Sleep.”
“I will.”
“Nice arm, kid,” Josha says.
Scrap shoots him a hesitant smile, not sure if he’s joking, and they close the door on him cradling his arm to his chest like it is precious, like it is perfect.
The next morning, when Beckan is out at the tightroper shops and Scrap is about to, like every morning, like every afternoon, go down to the mines, Josha goes to the closet in the basement where they’ve stuffed Cricket’s things and starts rooting through. He startles when Scrap walks by.
“I thought you were gone,” Josha says.
“Just about. What are you doing?”
“Just looking through his papers and things. Does it matter?”
“That’s my stuff,” Scrap says. “I keep it in here. That’s mine.”
Josha drops the pages, quickly. “Oh,” he says. “Sorry.”
Scrap says, “I thought you were going to give me a break about this. I’ll let you read it when it’s done.”
“Like I want to read that.”
“Why else would you be going through my shit?”
“I thought it was Cricket’s. I’m sorry.” He stands up. “You’re going to the mines?”
“Yeah. Josha?”
“Hmm?”
“If you and Beckan were to want to get out of the city for a while . . . just, do you know how you might do that?”
“What?”
“I’m just asking. If you have any idea what direction would be the way to go.”
“The city’s blocked off. Gnomes are lining the place, posts set up in front of all the gates, tracing the walls. You didn’t know?”
Scrap freezes. “What?”
Scrap had not known that.
That had not been in Scrap’s book.
“They went out there a few days ago. You need to get out from underground more. Hey, get cash from them and get more stuff at the shops, okay? I forgot to tell Beckan I really want taffy. You like taffy, right?”
“Yeah. I’ll . . . see what I can do.”
“How come you don’t bring anything up anymore?”
“Shut up, Josha.”
A few weeks before he died, Cricket started coming home with twice, three times as much food as usual.
“Don’t you wonder how he’s getting that?” Beckan asked Scrap.
“Yeah,” Scrap said. “But it’s probably some risky shit. Two at once, taking some of the syrups instead of the pills.” All the stuff that Scrap had told Beckan, before she had even gotten dressed that first day, that she was not allowed to do.
“He goes up to the ropes all the time.”
“Yeah. Hmm. Maybe he’s tricking for them too.”
“Don’t you want to know?” Beckan said.
“No. I don’t.”
“I’m going to talk to him,” Beckan said, and maybe she did, but Scrap didn’t and he never checked up, because no one has ever been as horrible at leading a pack as Scrap was.
(Remember to take that out in the final draft, that’s stupid, I’ve got to stop making things that aren’t about Cricket about Cricket. That’s not even where that scene should go. It has nothing to do with anything. Remember to cross that out. Cricket, I miss you. I miss you so much, you stupid bastard.)
10
She came home rather early that evening after Tier first handed her the stacks of books, tottering under the pile. Scrap had told her earlier not to wait up; Cricket was taking the night off, and he was pulling double duty to compensate. It had taken her hours earlier that day of wondering why Scrap wasn’t angry at Cricket before she realized that the night off was not Cricket’s doing.
She wasn’t afraid of walking home alone, though a part of her did wish that Josha cared enough to keep her home, too. She could hear the quick snicks above her of tightropes being stretched and cut and new ones strung at twice the speed.
She heard giggling as soon as she opened the front door. “You’re not alone anymore!” she yelled. She dropped the books on the floor, all except one that was bright yellow and looked the most loved that she’d already decided was her favorite, and she ran into Cricket and Josha’s room.
They were both under the comforter, Josha drowsy with his head on Cricket’s chest, his eyes closed, his mouth in a smile, and Cricket whispering in his ear while he played with his hair. They had a candle lit on the nightstand and Beckan thought they were so pathetic and so lovely.
She pounced on the bed beside them, and they groaned and laughed.
“Miss me?” she said.
“Desperately,” Cricket said. “Right, kid?”
“Desperately,” Josha said.
She gave them her biggest smile. “Tier gave me a book.”
“Tier?” Cricket said. He never paid attention.
“Her gnome.” Josha wasn’t smiling anymore.
Cricket said, “Ew, Beckan, go take a shower.”
“He’s nice. He gave me tons of books, actually. I’m going to make Scrap read them all with me all the time and then he won’t have any time to make me read his horrible stories. Everyone wins.”
“But Scrap,” Cricket pointed out.
“Hmm. Yes. Poor Scrap. But he never wins anyway. Not even in his stupid stories.”
“He’s in the stories?” Josha said.
“No, no. Of course not really. But you can always tell which one is supposed to be him,” Cricket said.
“He doesn’t even write stories anymore,” Beckan said. “He’s a big historian now. You piss him off when you keep mentioning them.”
“That’s why I do it! My little Scrap used to make things up and he’s so embarrassed about it. Where is he?” Cricket said. He climbed out of bed—Beckan was surprised to see that he was dressed, since they weren’t very careful at this point, now that they’d seen each other kissed and touched and stripped down—and pulled on another sweatshirt. They had a wood-burning stove, but it did little to keep the house warm in the middle of winter. And the later in the year it became, the darker and longer the nights and the weaker their candles seemed.
Were they starting to lose hope already? I can’t remember.
“He’s probably still down in the mines,” Beckan said.
“I hope he brings soup,” Cricket said. “Or something we can make soup out of. Or a recipe for how to make soup out of the bread and old cheese we didn’t eat last night.”
Josha pressed his lips to the top of Cricket’s head. “In the mood for soup, are we?”
“Yeah.”
And then the world exploded.
The house shook, the vase fell off Josha’s dresser, and Beckan’s father, in her room, rolled around in his jar. Half a mile away, something cracked and fell, and half a mile beneath that, mines collapsed.
Gnomes suffocated.
“Scrap,” they said. “Scrap.”
I don’t want to write about back then anymore.
/>
I don’t want to write this fucking book anymore.
He didn’t come back for a day and a half.
They thought that if the tightropers bombing the mines hadn’t killed him, the gnomes surely would have eaten him by then. It was a long time before she learned why they hadn’t.
He had been trapped alone.
After Cricket stood on the streets and screamed at the sky that a fairy was trapped underground, the tightropers took to the ground with jackhammers and shovels and dynamite. They blew holes in the ground and sent down gun-laden search parties and Cricket screamed at them what is wrong with you what is taking so long I hear your guys up there still drinking and laughing why aren’t you saving him why aren’t you liberating us and finally the soldiers emerged in the middle of the night with a half-starved, shaking little fairy.
They were awake when Scrap came through the door. They’d been awake for thirty-four hours.
They tried to touch him, but he shook them off. He went to the sink and washed his face over the dirty dishes, again and again and again.
“We’re so glad you’re okay,” they said, and they didn’t know what else to do when the only thing they wanted in the whole world was to touch him and he wouldn’t let them.
That night, Beckan stood at his doorway and looked in on him. He was curled around the pillow, lying on his side, his eyes squeezed shut. He was so very not asleep.
“Scrap,” she said.
He startled.
“Can we read together?”
He sat up and nodded. She climbed up on the bed next to him, and while she sounded out the words, he lay his head on her chest and took deep breaths she could feel in her own body.
“I missed you,” she said. “Don’t ever disappear like that again.”
He was breathing so carefully.
“Is Tier okay?” she whispered, as he was falling asleep.
He cleared his throat. “His side didn’t collapse,” he said. His first words since he came home, and Beckan wished they’d been something more significant. Something about her. Something about him.
“I love you,” she said.
He looked up at her. “I love you, too.”
The next day he locked himself in his room and wouldn’t come out. It was too much. It was all just too much.
Tier gave Beckan a book to bring to him.
I don’t want to write about back then anymore.
I don’t want to write any of this anymore.
Josha is lingering by a bombed-out building with Tier, Rig, and Piccolo, waiting for Beckan to show up. He should have waited for her. He looks up toward the cottage, that tiny blur in the distance. She’ll be okay walking down alone. There isn’t anything to worry about anymore.
Piccolo says, “So . . . Beckan welds.”
“She made an arm for Scrap. It’s amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“You sound happy,” Piccolo says, and Josha blushes.
Piccolo is very pretty, is the thing.
He says, “Do you think she could . . . I’m talking hypothetically. But if we needed her to. Do you think she could make us armor of some kind?”
Josha says, “Shields, helmets? Yeah.”
“Good. That’s good.” He pauses. “Do you think she could make weapons?”
Piccolo divides their map of the city in sections for the Cricket search. He tells Tier and Rig and Josha to take the inner circle and the mines while he and Beckan scan the perimeter.
“Look under everything,” he tells them. “Try calling him. It can’t hurt. This is so, so important, guys.”
Josha gives him a small smile.
“I want to stay with you two,” he says to Piccolo, and Rig and Tier are planning a strategy.
Piccolo puts a hand on Josha’s shoulder. “I need you to look out for them,” he says. “Look, they seem like good kids, but this is all really new to them. I want to make sure they’re invested.”
“This is really new to all of us,” Beckan says, not quite sure what this is.
“I know I can trust you two.” Piccolo smiles at Josha. “I know I can trust you, kid.”
Josha grins and runs off, and Beckan says, “No one’s trusted him for a long time.”
Piccolo plays with her fingers. “I figured. We’ve got to get up on the ropes real quick, ready?”
“Oh . . .”
“I just need to see if the tightropers know anything. Play lookout.”
“About Cricket?”
“About anything.”
“Stop looking at me!” Piccolo says, laughing.
“I’m not looking!”
“You’re supposed to be looking out. Out there.”
But she is just loving this, loving watching him root through the stacks, mumbling to himself, singing bars of songs she doesn’t know. He’s alive, quick-fingered, enjoying himself.
And there’s no one around. They are in their own world.
He emerges triumphant with a stack of papers and they run, and she is so good at the tightropes now, and he picks her up and twirls her like she is a little thing.
“You’re amazing,” he says. “God, look at you.”
She doesn’t know that word. God. She doesn’t care. “You are so much better than them,” Beckan says, talking about the tightropers, the gnomes, everyone they have stolen from, everything. “You give a shit. I like that you give a shit.”
“I like that you smile,” Piccolo says, and right now she is lit up like twenty thousand stars. And then they are kissing, then they are on top of each other, sinking into the net of the ropes, then they are touching and holding and clawing at each other and Beckan starts laughing, she is so happy, she hasn’t been this happy in so long, nobody else makes her this happy and nobody else ever has. Nobody. She needs happy right now. It is what she should handle and all she should have to.
And then they hit the streets. They’re not subtle and they’re not quiet and they scream Cricket’s name and they hear Josha and Rig and Tier doing the same. They don’t find Cricket, but Beckan finds strength and excitement and power that she didn’t know she had.
Josha and the gnomes come back with paperwork about possible new tunnels the gnomes are building, possible access routes to open areas, possible formulas for explosives, and they crowd in an empty lot that once was not an empty lot and tear through what they’ve found and Piccolo tells them how proud he is.
She and Josha get home very late. Scrap is already asleep, on top of his covers, all of his clothes still on, even his shoes. “We should feed and water him,” Josha grumbles. “Like a plant.”
“Like your bean sprouts.”
“They died.”
Beckan wakes Scrap up and hands him a glass of water. He sips. He is so tired.
“You didn’t come home for ages,” he says.
“We were out,” Josha says. “Having fun. You should try it.”
Scrap rubs his eyes. He looks confused. “What did you guys do? I saw you”—he points to Josha—“and Rig and Tier in the mines.”
“We were looking for Cricket,” Josha says. “You were in the mines? Why are you down there all the time?”
“We’ve gotta eat,” he says weakly.
“Then where’s the money?”
“Josha . . .”
“We did missions!” Beckan says. “Josha and Rig and Tier in the mines, me and Piccolo up on the ropes, and then all of us on the ground.”
“What kind of missions?”
Josha says, “Looking for Cricket, I fucking told you.”
Beckan says, “We did some reconnaissance stuff too, gathered information.”
“Stealing?”
“Well . . .”
Scrap rubs his forehead. “You guys stole from the gnomes? Do you know what a horrible idea that is? And the tightropers?”
Beckan and Josha look at each other quickly.
Like they know something Scrap doesn’t.
(Scrap doesn’t pay any fucking attent
ion because Scrap is an idiot.)
Josha says, “We didn’t steal anything important. Just paperwork. It’s not a big deal. Scrap, seriously, what is this? I sure as fuck don’t need another dad, and—”
“Neither do I!” Beckan says brightly. “Mine’s getting sun on the windowsill.”
“What’d you find?” Scrap says. “Are they planning an attack? Are the tightropers . . . are they doing something against the gnomes?”
Josha clucks his tongue. “Awfully protective of gnomes lately, aren’t we?”
Scrap stares him down.
Josha sighs. “The gnomes haven’t given up. They’re waiting for the right time or something, but they’re making plans. We went over it all with Piccolo. It’s just what Tier was hearing whispers of. They’re trying to organize . . . get some kind of new king. And after that they want to do a huge press aboveground. But they’re not going to do it until they feel like the tightropers are weak and until they have their new king. They’re pretty much impotent without this king.”
Beckan says, “Piccolo says as long as we figure out what we’re doing before they have the new king, we have an advantage. Then it just comes down to making the tightropers think it’s time for them to clear out, maybe alter their paperwork, make them think there’s some more lucrative city out there. And if their ropes are torn down, that’ll help with that because starting over in a new city would be practically as easy as staying.”
“Did it say who?” Scrap says.
Josha says, “What?”
“The king. Who they want for the king.”
Josha looks at him funny. “No. There was nothing in the papers we found. You think they have someone in particular in mind?”
Beckan says, “They want Tier, don’t they.” She looks at Scrap. “Scrap, we can’t let them have Tier. They’ll break him.”
Scrap says, “I’ll try to make sure they don’t bring his name up. I haven’t heard anything about him.”
“One of his brothers would be more likely. . . ,” Beckan says to herself.
Josha’s still watching Scrap. “You’ll make sure they don’t bring his name up? You have a lot of pull down there or something?”