“Oh. I made those.”
“And Scrap goes to our shops, like you.” He clears his throat. Scrap’s name, like every time he’s said it, sounds funny, and he must notice, because he says, “I don’t feel like I can use their names, because . . . you don’t think that I know you.”
She looks at him.
He has a sad little smile. “Cricket talked about you.”
“We were fine.” She kicks her feet and watches specks of glitter float down to the ground. “I didn’t know him like the others,” she says. “I mean, I knew him really well. I just . . . Scrap was like his brother. They grew up together. And he and Josha were in love like nobody I’ve ever seen.”
“What about Scrap and Josha?”
“They fought over Cricket like it was a game and now Cricket’s dead and they have nothing to fight about and no more games.”
“Sucks.”
“Scrap killed the guy who killed Cricket, and we all want that to be some positive heroic thing, except now we’re living with a killer and Scrap has to keep this with him, and Josha’s half in love with Scrap for killing Crate and half furious at him for having Cricket in the mines with him in the first place. Josha and Scrap had to have a relationship because the rest of us all did, so they made that as easy a relationship as they could just to be a convenience to everyone, and now the reason they had to have a relationship is gone and they’re still living six feet away from each other and they still care about each other and that’s no longer convenient, because Josha would rather hate him and Scrap would rather disappear.”
“And you’re still there. And they both love you.”
She flops down on her back, and Piccolo grabs her before she slips. She says, “Why is that always how it works? Cricket dying. The ones who are in love the most die, the ones who are going through the motions live forever and never really care about it.”
“Like fairies.”
“We care.”
Piccolo says, “I think that’s only in stories. I don’t think those who die are any better than those who stay alive. They just look better. They can’t mess anything up anymore.”
“I only know stories.”
He laughs. “I need to teach you how to live.”
It’s a stupid line, but she looks at him and she believes it. The only other lessons she’s had, after all, have been from a man in a jar, a boy who lives underground, and a boy who can live forever.
Never a girl.
Every once in a while, a book.
Cricket got Beckan ready on her first night of tricking. While Scrap and Josha argued in the kitchen, he put her hair up and set to work scrubbing the glitter off her neck. “They hate it,” he said. “You want as little as possible.”
“I thought glitter keeps them from eating us.”
“They won’t eat you. You’re too expensive.” He took glitter from her chin and pressed it onto her eyelids instead.
“What are they fighting about?” Beckan said.
Cricket rolled his eyes. “You know them. Josha’s being bitchy. He’s just worried about you,” Cricket said. “And me. But now that it’s both of us . . . really, now that it’s all of us, I guess. You know how he feels about tricking. Like we have much of a choice.”
But Cricket didn’t hate it.
Cricket took stupid risks and liked to feel important.
Cricket was alive.
“He does care about Scrap,” Beckan said.
Cricket shrugged and said, “I guess,” because whether or not Josha cared about Scrap was the subject of the majority of Cricket and Josha’s arguments. While the other two trusted Scrap as their leader, even if Josha’s acceptance was typically begrudging, Cricket still thought of Scrap as his little brother. Withdrawing that protective arm from around Scrap’s shoulders was one of the few things that Cricket would not do for Josha.
“He does,” Beckan said. “He loves him.”
Because how else was there to describe how they were than to say they loved each other? Even on Josha and Scrap’s worst days, one would have run into a burning building for the other. Beckan had long thought of family as a concept so simple she could keep it in a jar in the bottom of her tote bag. She hadn’t known much at all about love and now she was in love with the concept of it, in love with hugging her boys and watching them hug each other, and she didn’t want to believe that it could really be so much more complicated than that.
Cricket said, “They don’t know what to do with each other. Scrap’s willing to compromise a lot to keep us alive. Josha isn’t.”
“I’m with Scrap on this.”
“Josha thinks there are more important things than staying alive.”
“Like what?”
Cricket laughed. “Fuck if I know. I hope the gnomes drug me tonight. Makes it easier. I’m so tired.”
When they left, Cricket said, “We’ll be fine,” softly in Josha’s ear, and somehow tonight that was enough for Josha to lower his shoulders, to nod a little, to breathe.
“Don’t be delicious,” he yelled to Cricket, as always, as he left.
“Only thing I know how to be!” Cricket called back. As always. Every night, now.
“Listen,” Piccolo says. “Can I ask you something?”
“Mmmhmm.”
“That gnome I saw you with yesterday. Are you . . . friends?”
“Good friends, yeah.”
“That’s amazing. Beckan, that’s amazing.” He smiles. “This is perfect.”
“What?”
“I probably sound crazy. I sound crazy. I just . . . I would really love to get a group of us together, and it will work so much better if we have a gnome too. Me, you guys, a gnome.”
“Like a study group?”
He laughs. “You’re thinking book club, I’m guessing.”
“Shut up.”
He keeps laughing lightly and gives his head a shake. “An antiwar group.”
“The war is over. Shit. Shit.” She looks through the ropes. “That’s Josha down there. He sees us. I should go.”
Piccolo glances down, but then looks immediately back to her. “Beckan, listen. This isn’t peace. The gnomes are still scared to go aboveground, the tightropers are opening up shops like this isn’t your city anymore, you’re afraid to be seen with me. There can’t be real peace during an occupation. We need to integrate, all of us. That’s why we need a group. Being peaceful on your own, being quietly antiwar, it doesn’t work.” He ties another rope to her wrist to help her down. “Just think it over? I’m really not asking anything. Just to get to sit down with all of you together, meet your gnome friend, maybe? See if we can get a few gnomes together who want peace?”
“Maybe,” she says, but she doesn’t see any reason why not.
“Us young ones . . . we’re the ones who can change things. We’re not jaded and horrible and willing to accept that this will keep going and going. We feel things.”
Yes.
Yes, Beckan feels things.
And right now she feels that Piccolo is a little beautiful.
He rips something off his jacket and hands it to her. “Here. It’s our flag. Get a gnome flag too. And a fairy flag.”
“There is no fairy flag.”
“We’ll make one! Perfect. Now our group has a mission.” He smiles. “And then we’ll make a joined flag. Combining features from all of them, stuff like that. It’ll be a great way to bring us together at the beginning. Plus crafts are fun. Plus,” he says, again, more quietly. “I wouldn’t hate spending more time with you.”
She says, “That’s not the only mission I want to do.”
“Yeah?”
She clings to the rope with both hands and says, “I want to find Cricket.”
“Then we will.”
Josha is still standing there when they drop down from the ropes, arms crossed. But he doesn’t seem angry. He seems playful.
“So who’s this?” he says.
“Piccolo.” He offers his hand, a
nd they shake. Josha is trying to be polite, but Beckan can see him sneaking glances at Piccolo. The last time he saw a tightroper was probably when they were laughing at him when he tried to join their army.
“What are you doing out?” she says.
“Scrap wanted me to come find you. He has a headache and he’s all freaking out, worried because you said you’d be home.”
“Oh. Shit.”
He looks surprised. He expects her to be more formal in front of strangers. And now he’s realizing that she knows Piccolo fairly well if she’s cursing in front of him.
“So you made a friend, I see,” he says.
“He knew Cricket.”
“We’re going to find him,” Piccolo says. “We’ll get something organized. Search parties. I’m going to work on it.”
“Wow,” Josha says, quietly.
“He was lovely,” Piccolo says. “He had vision.”
Josha breathes out. “He totally had vision.”
She mills around while the two of them exchange small talk. They work in some more compliments of Cricket and some gentle ribs at Beckan’s gnome-nose or lack of climbing skills.
“Do you want to come by to the cottage?” Beckan says. “Grab a drink or something? Better than talking on the streets.”
Josha hesitates, and Beckan is confused; she thought they were getting along wonderfully, but he says, “It’s just Scrap. I think he . . . will want to talk to us alone about this. It’s not about you, it’s just, you know. Business.”
Piccolo nods.
Josha says, “Hanging out with tightropers . . . you know, it . . . didn’t do Cricket any favors.”
Piccolo looks down and swallows and says, “I’m so sorry.”
Josha is quiet for a long time, and Beckan waits, wringing her hands, knowing that the next thing Josha says will be very important.
“I believe you,” Josha says, softly, like he’s a little surprised.
No one had ever been louder than Josha. And then she met Cricket.
They used the word loud, but it wasn’t volume that came from Cricket, it was magnitude. Words fell out of his mouth like it hurt to keep them contained, and he constantly laughed and touched and stole your clothes and tried them on in front of you and determined they looked much better on him than on you. He would tell anybody everything.
Stupid boy.
It was a fucking war.
Josha is very quiet on the walk back to the cottage.
“Sorry if I scared you,” Beckan says.
Josha startles and looks up. “What?”
She gives up. He isn’t with her. He hasn’t been in so long.
Scrap is in the kitchen, throwing dirty plates into the sink and scrubbing them with his whole arm. Nobody used to do dishes, since they all knew they were the first thing he headed for when he sleepwalked. They’d wake up to a spotless kitchen.
But he hasn’t sleepwalked in weeks, and the dishes are piling up, and nobody knows what to say about it.
“How’s your head?” Josha says.
“It’s fine,” Scrap snaps, shoving the dishrag back and forth across the counter. “I don’t have a headache.” The little wince he gives when he turns to look at Beckan isn’t very convincing. “Where were you?”
“Whoa.”
“You’ve been gone all day. Tier hadn’t seen you, Josha hadn’t, who the fuck else was I supposed to ask, your father? Where were you?”
“Maybe I’ll tell you if you calm down.” She takes the towel from him and shoves him toward a chair. “Will you sit down? You’re still all hot.”
He balls his hand into a fist and pushes it into his forehead.
This morning, everything was fine. They were fine.
This is why it’s easier not to give a shit. To just be high above it all.
“Did something happen today?” she says.
“What?”
“In the mines? You were all calm earlier—”
“Where were you?”
She says, “Scrap, come on. I was up on the ropes. I made friends with a tightroper boy. That one you caught a glimpse of last time. He knows you. You’ve met him.”
“Which one?”
“Piccolo.”
“Piccolo?” He sits up straight and stares at her. “You go make a new friend, and you choose the son of the major general?”
“No,” Beckan says. “No, he’s not like that. He hates war. He hates the tightropers, for fuck’s sake. He’s their messboy.”
Josha says, “Listen to her, Scrap.”
“No. This is bullshit. Go hang out with Tier.”
“Are you kidding me?” She stares at him. “Don’t get me wrong here, okay? I love Tier. But he’s a gnome. You’d rather I be friends with a fairy-eating gnome—”
“Don’t say that about Tier,” Scrap says, and she feels bad, she does, but Josha is over Scrap’s shoulder, nodding, egging her on.
“—than a tightroper when they’ve never done shit to us . . . he bought my ring from Cricket, did you know that? He bought my ring. He’s trying to start a peace movement. He wants to talk to you. To get to know you for real. To help us find Cricket. He’s, I mean, he’s a messboy, right? He has a broom. He can sweep the streets and everything, maybe find a little bit of Cricket.” She’s fishing, obviously, and she knows it—they don’t need a tightroper to show them how to push a broom—but Beckan knows the cards to play to shut Scrap up and plays them well.
Because he does still think about Cricket. He thinks about too much. He gets headaches.
And right now he doesn’t say anything. Because Beckan knew Cricket and she knows how to use him. And she hates herself a little for it.
Beckan says, “Piccolo said he’s met you. What did you think of him?”
He breathes out, long and slow.
“I thought he seemed nice,” he says, quietly. He adds, “But I’ve talked to him all of twice. I don’t know the guy.”
“But he wants to know you. So maybe you could give him a chance before you freak completely out? I think you might actually like him if you took a second to stretch outside these weird prejudices you seem to have developed all of a sudden.”
Scrap looks like he’s about to say something, but instead he deflates. “Yeah,” he says. “You’re right.” He chews his cheek for a minute and says, “Sorry for yelling.”
“Did you have a bad day or something?”
He laughs, once. “Yeah. Yeah, you could say that.”
“Shit, honey. Did they hurt you?”
He shakes his head. “No. Everything’s fine. Nothing you need to worry about.”
“Please?”
He shakes his head again.
She gives up. She’s done enough today. She goes to her room and takes her father out of her nightstand, where she’s had him locked for so long it makes guilt pool in her stomach. She holds the jar and feels like a girl in a book, and for once that doesn’t make her happy. She’s not a hero anymore. She’s just helpless and written.
8
Scrap comes up from the mines the next day with the news that Tier is looking for Beckan, so she resists the instinct to make herself pretty and goes down in her sweatshirt and sneakers, even though it’s too hot to be that covered up. The point is that they’re not whoring clothes.
“You have to stop hiring me,” she says, stripping off the sweatshirt as she enters his cave. But he isn’t alone. There is Rig, beside him, one ankle crossed over the other.
She is big and brown, like she was carved right out of rock.
Beckan stuffs her sweatshirt in her tote bag. She is nervous in a way she hasn’t been with Tier in a very long time.
“I’m sorry,” she says, to Rig. “If I’d known you were here, I wouldn’t have come.”
“Beckan,” Tier says.
“No, come on, she doesn’t want to see me.”
“I asked him to get you,” Rig says.
Beckan stops.
Rig says, “I wanted to talk to you.??
?
Tier leans over and gives Rig a miniscule kiss on the cheek before he scoots off the bed and out of his room. He doesn’t touch Beckan.
Rig doesn’t indicate if Beckan should sit next to her, so she doesn’t. Rig stays still, and Beckan wanders the room like it’s new to her, touching books on the shelves that she’s read and ones that she’s never noticed before, a picture Tier drew of his father, the picture of Rig.
“Beckan?” Rig says.
She snaps her head up.
“Are you afraid of me?”
She tries to find the words.
Rig says, “Please don’t be.”
“What do you have to eat?”
“You’re hungry?”
Beckan shakes her head, and Rig seems to understand.
She says, “There’s . . . carnage from the war, still. Tightropers. Some of our own. It’s better than what we got while we were . . . The tightropers, they don’t eat meat. They don’t have the stomachs for it.”
“And there aren’t any fairies.”
“No. You’d know if we had one. You could tell from up above. The glitter cooks off and . . . it makes that yellow smoke.”
Her breath catches.
They do have a fairy.
They had one a few days ago.
She saw the smoke.
Rig is lying.
Beckan takes a step back.
Bad bad this is bad. Bad.
Where did they get a fairy?
They haven’t found the smallest crumb of Cricket.
Beckan forces herself to calm down. Tier wouldn’t hurt her, she thinks. Tier wouldn’t even hurt Scrap. He would never leave her somewhere unsafe. He loves her.
And maybe Rig knows that.
“You’re scared of me,” Rig says. “I knew it. You’re scared of me?” Beckan nods before she can stop herself.
“No, Beckan, don’t be. I just . . . I wanted to talk to someone. About Tier, and . . . well. You know him. And there just aren’t many girls around. There were nurses up there who spit at us and there were the gnome girls stolen with me, but we were locked separately, we never . . . I need to talk to a girl.”