“When was the last time you saw Piccolo and everybody?” Scrap says a few days later in a voice that is so genuine and naïve and stupid it could slay her.
“I don’t know,” she says, and she does nothing but eat and sleep for the rest of the week.
Josha comes home less and less and spends his days with Piccolo up in the sky. He says the gnomes don’t come up anymore. He says one of them couldn’t stand it and doesn’t say which. Everything broke, so quickly.
Scrap disappears to the mines again and again and he comes up each time looking like someone has sucked out some of his blood. Shaky, pale, somehow smaller. Glitter missing in patches.
Beckan brings herself to care about all of this as much as she can, which is hard when she can barely get herself out of bed.
She gets up at one point to get a glass of milk and Scrap is holding his head at the kitchen table, staring down at an empty mug.
“Becks?” he says, without looking up.
“Yeah?”
“Will you tell me how Cricket made all that money?”
It’s his voice. That’s the reason she tells him. He sounds like he has given up and what harm will it do now?
“He was a spy,” she says.
“Spying on the gnomes?” His voice is resigned, like he’d figured this out.
But: “No,” she says. “Spying on the tightropers.”
Scrap looks up.
“He took information from the tightropers and brought it down to the gnomes. They paid him for it and he got to stop tricking. The tightropers liked him, never suspected anything. And then that day . . . Cricket was talking to the tightropers and I guess Crate decided he couldn’t trust him.”
Scrap is frozen, his hands covering his eyes. In this light, his fake one almost looks real.
“You didn’t want to know,” Beckan says. “So I didn’t tell you.”
“That’s how you guys got your information on the tightropers.”
“Cricket’s old stuff, and what Piccolo and I stole. None of it turned out to be very useful. If they’d had anything good, Cricket would have found it and the gnomes probably would have won the war while they could.”
“While they had a king.”
“Right.”
Scrap shakes his head for a while, silently.
“That was so stupid,” he says. “Why did he do that? If he hated tricking so much . . . he could have stopped, we could have gotten by just the two of us.”
“No. We couldn’t have.”
“We could have made it work. I could have made it better for him. If he’d talked to me, I—I don’t know, I could have done something.”
Beckan says, “Why did you want to know now?”
“I just thought it might change something. Help somehow. I don’t know.”
“Well,” she says. “Did it help?”
“No. No, it didn’t.” He clears his throat. “Where’s your dad? I haven’t seen him lately.”
Beckan puts her cup down. She didn’t drink any. “You don’t know anything.”
“What?”
“You’re writing a fucking book and you didn’t know that Cricket is a spy. How can you write a book that’s going to mean anything if you don’t know what’s going on? If you don’t see stuff that’s right the fuck in front of you?”
He stares at her.
She says, “What else do you think you’re missing?”
He puts his head back in his hands.
“I can’t do this,” she says. “I’m going back to bed.”
“’Night, Beckan.”
Shit I’m sorry it’s been so long I don’t know how the fuck I’m supposed to write now but I’ll do my best I don’t know how much time I have I wish they were here I wish they were here I would do anything.
12
I’m sorry. I don’t have much time.
The next night, before she goes to bed, Scrap says, “Wait.”
He goes to her and hugs her. He’s wearing the locket, and it presses against her chest.
They haven’t touched very often lately. They haven’t done anything very often but fight.
“I love you,” he says.
“What? I love you, too.”
“I’m so, so sorry about your dad.”
“Josha told you?”
“Finally.” He runs his fake arm through his hair. He’s getting very good at it. He knows exactly the angle to hold it so the fingers will catch his hair as if they were real.
“I’m sorry about tomorrow,” he says.
“What?”
“About what’s going to happen.”
“Scrap, what?”
“I’m just sorry.”
She wakes up to crying, vomiting.
Her first thought is, all that noise could not be coming from only one creature.
Her second is, all that noise is coming from Scrap.
But she falls back asleep, and when she next wakes up, he’s gone.
The house is empty.
She hauls herself out of bed. Every muscle in her body feels twisted and frozen. It is eighty degrees outside, but she tugs on one of Josha’s old sweatshirts. She is so cold.
It’s early, much earlier than Scrap usually goes to work, but he isn’t here. He’s down in the mines every day now, at strange hours, for long stretches. Maybe he has a friend down there.
Maybe he has a girlfriend, boyfriend, something.
Is that so unbelievable?
When was the last time she worked? She runs her finger through days on the calendar. Two weeks ago, back when Piccolo was only a boy on a rope. She misses working, a little, which surprises her. It’s not something she would say if she still had to do it, or if prostitution was ever the same for her as it was for Scrap and Cricket. She was never a real whore, not really; she was a girl thrown together with a boy she otherwise would never have loved, but she misses him. Right now she misses Tier so badly, she can taste it.
It tastes like cold mud and bacon grease and skin without glitter.
She needs to get out of this silent house, finally. She puts on a hat and gloves. When she steps outside, she knows she is hot, but for once she doesn’t feel it.
And then she hears shouting.
Josha.
She runs toward the noise, because she knows Josha, and it doesn’t matter that he is six inches shorter than Piccolo; she doesn’t know who else he could be yelling at, who else he cares enough to yell at like that, and no one on the receiving end of Josha’s temper stands a chance. And whatever she feels about Piccolo, she does not want him dead. That is one thing she knows, one of the few things: she does not want Piccolo dead.
She runs. Her feet know the places where the cobblestones have been fixed. Her hand knows which lamppost is stable enough to hold her as she vaults herself from 3rd Street to 4th Street from Huntington to Liberty to 5th to Sarosoto and there they are.
But Josha is not yelling at Piccolo.
He is yelling at Scrap.
“Leave me alone!” he screams. “Go away! Go home!”
“Not without you!” Scrap yells back. “Get. The fuck. Home.”
Piccolo puts one hand on Scrap’s shoulder and the other on Josha’s. “Hey. Guys. Hey.”
Scrap hits Piccolo’s hand off his shoulder and turns to face him. “No. You. You stop this now. You are going to get hurt. You have no idea what you’re doing. You are going to hurt Josha.”
“We’re just pulling down some ropes,” Piccolo says. “Nobody’s going to get hurt.”
Scrap says, “If the gnomes see the tightropers are weak—”
Piccolo says, “Scrap, seriously, are we doing this again? They are useless without a king.”
“You don’t know everything about them!”
“Fucking Scrap, defender of gnomes everywhere,” Josha mumbles.
“They don’t know we’re doing anything.” Piccolo says.
“You think you’ve been subtle? You’re underground, you’re on the ground, you’
re above the ground, you’re everywhere, and they hear you.”
“So what if they do?” Piccolo bats him away. “We’re just making some noise.”
“Before all you were doing was defending yourself, and before that you were looking for my cousin and making a fucking flag!” Scrap pushes him. He is so much more than six inches shorter than Piccolo.
Piccolo says, “Don’t push me, kid.”
“I’m not a kid!”
Piccolo laughs. It’s cold.
“Right,” he says. “Right. You’re the little den mother. Well, guess what? Josha doesn’t need a babysitter, and all Beckan needed was someone to open her eyes—”
“No!” she shouts.
They all spin around. Not one of them had noticed her.
“I did not need anyone to open my eyes!” she says. “I am not some sheltered little child, okay? I’m not a little princess just because I’m a girl. I had a knife the day Cricket was killed. I was there. I could have killed Crate,” she tells Scrap.
He closes his eyes. “Beckan, go home,” he whispers.
“Screw you. Both of you! I’m not doing this here. You go home,” she tells Scrap.
“Make Josha and I will.”
“Make Josha? Who do you think I am, Cricket?”
“Fuck off,” Josha spits at her, but he tells Piccolo, “I’ll see you later,” and stalks back toward the cottage. Scrap runs after him.
“Aren’t you going?” Piccolo says.
She shakes her head. “In a minute. I’m not done with you.”
Piccolo crosses his arms and leans against a rope. He’s cocky and beautiful and he has that half smile and he is everything she would want if she were different.
She says, “I’m not that girl.”
“You’re any girl you want to be.”
“And I don’t want to be that girl.”
He watches her and doesn’t say anything.
“How do you want me to feel, like I’m cute and young and so glad you’re here to show me what’s going on, because I’m useless and I can’t have kids or wings and . . . that’s not me. I’m just more. I have my pack. And I went through all the shit they did. I was there when Cricket died, and I fought Crate off or I would have been killed too. You know that?”
“I saw it,” Piccolo says.
“Then give me some fucking credit,” she says. This cocky, idiot, beautiful jerk. “Go home, Piccolo.”
Maybe she’s trying to make him slip, say I am home, reveal that this whole time he’s been on the tightroper’s side, settling in to their city, laughing at the stupid fairies. Maybe she was expecting that.
She wasn’t expecting him to say, “Screw you, Beckan,” in the most broken voice, spit a rope into his hand, and zip away.
Scrap and Josha stare at each other in the silent kitchen.
“Show her the book,” Josha says suddenly.
“She saw it.”
“No. Show her.”
Scrap has his head in his hands. “Shut up.”
“Then fucking tell her.”
“Give me the locket.”
Josha holds it tightly. “No.”
I should have told her.
I did it all wrong.
Shit shit shit shit, who writes a fucking book?
Beckan shuts the door quietly behind her. “Okay,” she says. “We’re going to talk about this. Like adults. Which means you”—she points at Josha—“don’t start screaming and leave, and you, you stop acting aloof and bitchy and superior. We’re in this together, Scrap. This is a family. And you are not mother hen. You were our general, and the war’s over, so cut it the fuck out.”
“I’m trying to be an adult,” Scrap says. “I’m trying to stop moping around. . . .”
“So tell us what’s going on.”
“You guys are going to get killed.”
Josha snorts. “Scrap, you go down to the mines every day. This has got to be the least dangerous thing we’ve done this whole war.”
“Don’t do it.”
“I have to do something. I’m coming out of my skin.”
“You don’t understand.”
He says, “Then tell me. Fucking tell me.”
Scrap pinches the top of his nose, like he does when he has a headache.
Beckan whispers, “What’s wrong with you, Scrap?”
He doesn’t move.
“Tell her what you’re writing,” Josha says, and nobody responds, so he says, louder, “Tell her.”
“That’s not what this—” Scrap starts, and then he shakes his head.
“Just tell her already,” Josha says, and then Scrap stands up and throws his blue notebook at the table. Pages scatter across the surface.
“Fine!” he says. “Fine.”
Beckan says, “I’ve already seen this.”
Scrap looks at Josha. “Can you give us a minute?”
They stare at each other for a moment as though they are about to fight.
Beckan remembers when they loved each other.
“Fine,” Josha says. He goes to his room and closes the door.
Scrap says, “I told you it was stories about all of us. I thought that’s what it was. But that’s not what it is. It’s about you.” He rakes his hand through his hair. “It’s one long story and it’s about you.”
She can feel her heartbeat. “What?”
“It’s Tier’s fault . . . those stupid fiction books, I’m trying to write something real, trying to write about this war, and I can’t get this love story out of my mind.”
Her voice breaks. “A love story? You’re writing . . . about Josha and Cricket?”
He sinks to the table and puts his head back in his hands, and she gets it.
“This is creepy,” she says. “You’re creepy.”
“I know.”
“You’re in love with me?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? You’re writing a love story about me!”
And he looks up. “I want you out of my head!” He throws the book open and flips through the pages. He cuts his finger. “I have written so many pages, look at this, just trying to get you out of me. I thought I could write this stupid little thing and get it out of my system and then start writing my real book, if I could just figure out a happy ending, some way this could work, but I can’t. I keep just writing all the bullshit that is really happening and anything I can plug in that makes it make sense, but I’m always behind, I’m always missing things, and here you are, you’re everywhere and I cannot stop writing this.”
“Because you put me there!” She pulls back. “This is why you didn’t want me to hang out with Piccolo! I told you, there’s nothing—”
He says, “No. This has nothing to do with that.”
“What, you expect me to believe you were just looking out for the gnomes? You want to know why I can’t be in love with you?”
He doesn’t move.
“Not because I’m in love with Piccolo, not because I’m scared of getting hurt the way Josha was if somethinghappenedtoyou, because I am in love with one fucking thing, and that thing is not being at war, and I can’t forget that, I can’t let myself forget about that for one second.”
“You don’t understand.”
“This isn’t supposed to be a love story! History isn’t a love story. Do you know who taught me that?”
“I don’t want to write this.” He presses his palms into his eyes. “I don’t want to write this.”
“This is a shitty way to tell me you’re in love with me,” she says.
“I didn’t know how else to do it.”
She walks to the sink because she doesn’t know what else to do.
“You could have just told me,” she says after a minute. “You could have just said something outright. But you’ve never been that guy. You don’t know how to be that guy. What the fuck kind of romantic hero . . .”
“I’ve told you I love you, don’t give me that.”
&nbs
p; “Yeah, the way we tell Josha and we used to tell Cricket! You could have just told me. Just stopped thinking and stopped writing for a minute and just told me something!”
And he says, as fast and as loud as he’s ever said anything, “I have to tell the gnomes today that I’ll be their king or they’re going to eat me.”
She hears all these things that she’d never noticed before.
The click of the clock above the stove.
The dripping sink.
Scrap’s heartbeat.
And Josha heard it, Josha is out of the room, Josha is yelling at him like this is all Scrap’s fault and he has doomed them and like he has already decided what the fuck he’s going to do.
“It’s protocol,” Scrap says. His voice is so hoarse. “Protocol . . . I killed the last king, I have to succeed—”
“It was self-defense!” Beckan cries. “You weren’t trying to—”
“It doesn’t matter.” Scrap sits down, hard. “They don’t have organization, and they think they need this huge push through the ground to get any sort of headway, and they’ve let me in on all this stuff. And they know about you guys. They know you guys are planning.”
Josha says, “You told them.”
Beckan stares at Scrap.
Scrap says, “What?” like he’s so exhausted.
“You told them about me and Piccolo and Beckan. You tipped them off that the tightropers are going to be weak.”
“No,” Scrap says. “Leak did.”
“Leak?”
“He runs the elevator. He saw you going down to the mines, he knows you’re involved with Piccolo, they heard you and Rig and Tier talking. You guys were not careful.” He breathes out. “The gnomes are just waiting for you to weaken the tightropers, and then they’re going to take over. All of the tightropers are going to get hurt, and you could be too, now that they realize you give a shit.”
“You’re betraying us!” Josha yells. “You’re going to be their king and make this a gnome city.”
“That’s the idea,” Scrap says. Quietly.
Beckan makes her eyes as narrow as they will go. “You’re bringing the war back. They’re starting the war up again. You’re going to lead them in it.”