Page 51 of Bent Heavens

“But maybe…” She swallowed, her throat tight and feverish, and those prophetic words of her father wheezed out one last time: “You know what to do.”

“Don’t worry,” Doug whispered. “I’ll take care of it.”

Liv’s body doubled in weight: guilt, grief, acceptance. Last night Doug had confessed that A was the only thing of value he had left, but now he seemed willing to let that thing go. And in doing so, he would save Liv’s life—her potential, her future, everything for which her mom had worked so hard for so long. All Liv had to do to accept this gift was to give in to the weariness, just this once. Not move. Not dispute. Not do anything.

Doug picked his way across the messy floor. Liv opened her mouth but didn’t make a sound. Her mother would hear. Or Liv herself would hear, and the sound would coerce her into making a second sound, then a third, and wasn’t all of it, here at the end, pointless self-destruction? There was a great, unanticipated relief in seeing A slip from her responsibility, a relief she’d felt once before, when her father jumped an electric fence. Letting things go hurt. Keeping them around could hurt even more.

Doug paused at the door and glanced over the top of A’s head.

“I’ll see you soon,” he whispered. “I promise.”

Liv was nodding. She knew it by the taste of salt; her nodding had shaken free tears, hopefully the last she’d taste for a while. Doug disintegrated into the hallway without Liv having said a single word to A, not even the simple shushes she’d made hours earlier: I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

She lay down and pressed a pillow over her face, still ripe with A’s odor, and told herself, over and over, that this was the only way all of this could ever realistically end. Anything else—rescuing her father’s name, discovering the significance of Carbajal—had been a fantasy of heroism that she, no hero, had no hope of pulling off. If she couldn’t be the steadfast soldier her father had trained her to be, then it was a lucky thing that Doug could.

FOURTH STANZA:

THE HEART’S CELLARDARK

26.

Liv braved the shed late that afternoon, and before she could reach the first bulb, she could see that all messes had been cleaned. There were no signs that A had ever existed, and Liv wondered if, over time, she might convince herself that that was true. The only task left was to dismantle and destroy Amputator, Hangman’s Noose, Crusher, Hard Passage, Neckbreaker, and Abyss. Difficult tasks, but ones for which she’d waited a very long time.

What she didn’t expect, upon yanking the light string, was that the shed wasn’t only cleaned, but cleared. And shed was the right word now, not Armory: Doug, in completist fervor, had taken every last one of Lee Fleming’s weapons from their pegs and hooks. All that remained were twenty-some chalk outlines and several dangling chains.

Liv’s sense of loss throbbed like a toothache. The weapons, though born of crazed obsession, had been tangible proof of her father’s life. But she’d relinquished Resurrection Update to Doug without a fight, and he would have considered the weapons part of the same deal: He was Lee’s rightful heir, not her. She found herself staring at the wrist compass, the only artifact she had left. She watched the nervous wobble of the needle, how it pointed north no matter what. Maybe it could still lead her in the right direction.

She plucked Mist from her bedroom floor and placed the weapon in the back seat of the station wagon, safekeeping until the next time she passed an unobserved dumpster.

Liv walked into Bloughton High’s halls two days later feeling untethered and shaky, and that fragile openness, in contrast to the guarded clench and evasive ducking of the past weeks, must have shown. People’s looks lingered, as if she were crying, and they couldn’t ignore the urge to comfort. For some, shame at having attended Doug’s “show” might have had a part. Maybe they’d been sympathetic to her all along, and she’d just been unwilling to see it.

Krista was standing right next to Liv’s locker when Liv reached it. Krista hadn’t planned it; she’d been held up by the calculus teacher. But the teacher scuttled off and there they were, the two of them planted in front of each other like gunslingers. Liv stared, emptied of artifice, as vulnerable as a creature zip-tied in front of someone who hated it.

Krista formed a child’s deep frown, an exaggeration to lighten the sadness.

“Oh, Liv,” she said weepily.

Liv shrugged vaguely, not knowing what to say, but needing her friend back badly, so badly. Krista did not disappoint. Her arms lifted, and Liv found that she still knew how this worked. She tilted into Krista’s embrace, and her arms, acquainted with holding Bruno in passion and A in sorrow, tightened around Krista in regret.

“I’m sorry,” Liv whispered.

“Don’t be,” Krista said into her ear.

They unlocked but held on to each other’s forearms. Liv didn’t want to be so far from her friends ever again; it took all her willpower not to pull Krista back against her body.

“None of us went to that thing of Doug’s,” Krista said. “I want you to know that. We knew it wasn’t right. How is he?”

“I don’t know,” Liv said, and she didn’t.

Krista nodded. “Okay. Well, you better sit with us at lunch, all right?”

Liv felt a flutter of panic. But social panic was a gift after the life-and-death burdens that had controlled her emotions for weeks.

“I can’t,” Liv said. “I’m too embarrassed.”

Krista frowned sternly. “Stop it. We miss you.”

“Even Monica?”