“Yeah, Mom. Of course.”
She sighs again. “Are you sure? You know what happens when you lie, baby.”
Thebabyjabs like a sharp fingernail. Where other kids have Bloody Mary, people like us have flayed men. They call them by different names, tell different variations of the story, but the gist of it is the same: a creature like us who turned on his family. Devoured their hearts, and in return was cursed with eternal life. Or blessed, I guess. Depends on the telling.
My mom’s flayed man story, passed down from her mom, was of a monster who stalks firefly-lit swamps, fangs machete-sharp, unable to return to his human form. I don’t know whether he can read minds in the original version, or if my mom added that part herself. When I was in elementary school, if she thought I was keeping a secret, she’d stand in the bathroom with all the lights off and pretend to talk to him until I begged her to come out, swearing I’d never do anything wrong again. He was her way of warning me: if you lie to your mom, if you choose anyone over your family, there are consequences.
“I’m sure.” I can’t deal with this right now. “I promise, everything’s fine.”
Another long silence. The smack of a door, more shuffling. Then, finally, slightly muffled, “Ellis?”
“Yeah?”
“Where are you? It’s five in the morning. Are you in trouble?”
I peel my fingers off the wheel one by one and count the things I know to be true. It’s my job to take care of her. It’s not her fault that she gets confused. She’s only worried because she loves me. “I’m fine, Mom. I’ll see you soon.”
I hang up before she can ask any more questions. The sky outside is the same indifferent gray as the concrete of the parking structure. This time, when the engine coughs and refuses to turn over, I feel like screaming.
The tap on my window makes me flinch.
“Hey.” Zawadski fills the entire window with the thick-padded navy blue of her medic jacket. “Need a jump?”
I do need a jump, and if it were anyone else asking, I’d be drowning in gratitude. But seeing her resurfaces the prickly strangeness from earlier, and something else too. A sudden instability, like this is the last step of a complex dance I didn’t know I was doing. Or the surreal silence before an ambush.
“Sure.” I climb out of the driver’s seat. “Yeah.”
Her car’s almost as old as mine, and with at least ten times as many dents. She strips off her jacket to dive under the hood with the jumper cables, red in one hand, black in the other. One bicep is a mess of bruises in various stages of healing. A circle of rich purple mottled with red dots, fading to brown, then green, then yellow bleeding into her elbow, making oil-slick shimmers where it crawls across round, shiny craters of scarring. A nicotine patch is plastered across the back of her other arm.
She jerks her chin up. “Back in the car.”
As I pass her, I smell old wounds again, clotted and scabbing, and the soft smooth wetness of regeneration beneath. Zawadski idles her car for a couple minutes, and when I turn the key, my car starts like there was never any problem. What if there wasn’t? What if I imagined it or just forgot how to start a car? What if the thing ravaging my mom’s brain is in me too?
A smack on the driver’s side door pulls me back. Right. This is what’s real. The rumbling car and Zawadski’s expression halfway between embarrassment and sympathy as she mutters, “Give it another minute, okay?”
When we lean against the car together, side by side as the metal shudders under us, I discover her hair isn’t shaved, just slicked flat to her head with gel that makes it look more black than brown and smells like artificial lemon. She’s shorter than I expected, with lips that tilt up at the corners and shoulders that slope in like she’s using them to form a barrier between herself and the world.
She folds her arms over her chest. “I’m sorry for being a dick to you earlier.”
The car hums expectantly. I’m not sure what she wants me to say.
“It’s just, you know. Kid stuff gets to me sometimes.” She’s staring intently at the concrete seam at the corner of the parking lot. “That girl we brought in, she’s eight. Second grade. She was already having a tough time at home, and now a hospital stay… ”
“It’s okay,” I assure her automatically. “Certain stuff gets me too.”
I picture the teenager’s bright blood spattering my desk. Such a waste.
“I’ve seen you around.” Zawadski turns on me with eyes that seem to want to pin me in place and dissect me. “How long have you been on nights?”
“A while.”
“You like it?”
I work nights because no one stays on the night shift long, no one bothers me much, and because during the day, I need to be there for my mom. How will she be when I get home? Confused and concerned, or furious at some perceived betrayal? Or the worst one, the unnatural docility, like something sucked her essence out and left nothing but numb flesh. My mom loves me more than she loves anything, or anyone. All she wants in return is that I love her too, that I keep nothing from her, that I let nothing take me away from her. Why is that so hard for me to do?
“Yeah,” I say, because it’s a lot easier to answer Zawadski’s question than my own. “It’s peaceful.”
She scrunches her nose, revealing crooked canines. “Yeah, if your definition ofpeacefulis getting screamed at while you’re trying to save someone’s life.”
