Peachy, p.30
Peachy, page 30
Jessamae watched me conspicuously. The weight of her dissatisfaction hung on my shoulders like buckets of water. Ben’s question did this and I did not have the energy to stretch stupidly between the two of them today. “I’ll go with you.”
Cleo’s head swiveled to me in surprise. “Will you?”
“Yeah, I mean, three live animals. Kind of a handful.” Her arched eyebrows stayed near her hairline as she clearly summed me up. “I’ll go with you,” I stated again.
“Okay. Finish your breakfast and take a shower, please.” I glared at the toaster. I was living with a bunch of clucking mother-hens.
The supply shopping was much easier than expected: no hiking, no fishing, but literal shopping. Cleo had to stop at a Payless along the nearest strip mall first, my boots now scraps in their dumpster—they’d smelled too bad to keep in my own trash can. I gave her my credit card and asked for the cheapest pair of sneakers they had, to which her mouth turned down in indignation.
Once my tender feet were socked and shoed, we walked into the wonderfully air-conditioned warehouse of a PetSmart thirty minutes out of town. I picked out an especially hefty Comet Goldfish. It only cost a quarter, which was a tad nauseating as I held the sad little life in a Ziploc. The bird was more expensive but still the cheapest in the store, an Andrew Jackson for a zebra finch. I was more comfortable giving the bill for the pretty bird with the vibrant orange blush. No life should cost a quarter.
I strolled the quiet aisles full of lizards and guinea pigs, checking price tags. I stopped beside the enormous snake terrariums in disgusted fascination. Cleo continued to survey displayed prices for the most inexpensive land species. She turned the corner toward the turtles.
I stared transfixed at one of the coils, alone in the glass box. It appeared to be young, maybe a baby, and was coated in the strangest assortment of colored scales I’d ever seen. It was a striking bright white, which covered most its length, but was patched in unanticipated oranges, blacks, and browns. Its face was … almost cute. Its nose was wide, its head more of an hourglass than a triangle, and its eyes were big black orbs with white spots of light, animated eyes. It had an intelligent air and its stare held mine in a way that made me want to pet the icky skin.
The sign told me it was a female junior piebald ball python. It was over a hundred dollars. A lot over. A batshit amount over. For a snake—a snake whose life would only last the day. I squeezed my hand into the pocket of my shorts for the cash Ben gave me. Two sweaty twenties.
“Mice are a good price,” Cleo said, walking toward me. Without realizing it, I had my hands pressed to the glass of this terrarium, my cash crushed under my palm like I was desperate for a reptilian striptease. The snake slithered closer to the barrier, gazing curiously at my fingerprint smudges.
“This is the one,” I blurted. “I can feel it, we need this one.” I pointed to the python waiting patiently in its cage.
Cleo tapped her foot to the laminate. “I didn’t realize you were a snake lover.”
“I hate snakes.”
Her eyes narrowed and flicked to the price tag. “We only have forty dollars, Frankie. We don’t need to spend the money just to kill it. Move on.” She strutted past me toward a very bored teen employee that appeared to be counting hamsters. She abruptly turned around, “When you have these gut feelings, are they generally valid?”
“It’s a coin flip, I think.”
She pursed her lips. “A mouse it is then,” and continued toward the blue smock.
Cleo was bemused when I gave the cashier the two twenties while repeatedly whipping my head back toward the snakes. I couldn’t explain the compulsion, so I didn’t try.
We walked prudently to Ben’s car, encumbered with animals. Cleo held the bagged fish and the boxed bird, as well as smelly fish flakes and some birdseed. I held a small box full of holes for the two mice I bought—they seemed so breakable, I thought there was a chance one might keel over at a strong breeze—as well as pellets for them. The cashier looked perturbed by our purchasing food and no cages or bowls, but I decided that if they were going to die, they deserved a decent final meal.
I slid with care into the passenger seat—I suck at driving stick—adjusting the mice in my lap. Cleo set the bird at my feet and plopped the fish into the center console. I felt the weight of the mice shift steadily throughout the confines of their cardboard, and my shoulders tensed with apprehension.
The bird chirped erratically, flapping against its prison. “Quiet, please!” she ordered, and so it was. The silence of the box was chilling. Cleo nodded at the mute fish and zoomed onto the main road.
“There’s a great coffee place around here. My treat,” she trilled as she swerved dangerously into a hidden drive-thru between two ugly apartment buildings. I gripped the mice box roughly in my hands, willing it to steady during the crazed turn. The rodents hurried from corner to corner. I scowled at Cleo. “Sorry,” she shrugged and turned to the dingy black speaker. “Could I please get a large iced mocha with whipped cream and a triple iced Americano? Thank you.” She pulled forward without a response.
“I don’t like mochas.”
“You’ll like this one.”
A pale girl with vivid red hair and nails like a cat stood inside the window. She ogled blatantly at Cleo as she popped open the glove compartment, pulling out two metal tumblers. “Would you use these, please? Thank you.” She held the two cups out the window for many moments too long while the girl took her fill.
“Thank you!” I yelled, shocking the girl out of her stupor. She visually shook herself and took the cups from Cleo, brushing her fingers as she did so. Cleo smiled radiantly until the girl disappeared into the darkness of the building, then she let out an irritated pfft.
She pulled into a faded parking spot behind a towering brick wall after taking our drinks and doting out an overly generous tip to the girl. The mocha was wonderful and cooled my insides all the way down. I poked at the whipped cream with several fingers and licked them clean.
“Cleo, what do you do? For work, I mean.” I’d yet to see her leave for any sort of shift, yet she clearly had no problem with money. She’d virtually furnished our house on her own.
“I teach adult language courses. Mostly online.” She sipped her dark beverage from behind expensive yet simple sunglasses.
My eyes widened. “What language?”
She licked the coffee from her full lips. “French, Spanish, Italian …”
Of course. I repressed an eye roll, and took a long pull through the cold metal straw.
“So, Ben’s moving in. For a while. That’s convenient,” she mentioned off-handedly. “I assume he’ll be staying in your room?”
I sucked the liquid from my teeth. “I’m not sure. I guess so.”
“And Jessamae. What are the two of you, anyway?”
I slammed my head back into the headrest. When I felt the mice scramble on my knees inside their box, I placed my fingers on the edge apologetically. We were gossiping like a couple of preteens in an online chat room.
“Ahh … I don’t know. I don’t know what to … do anymore.” My focus lingered on the box, the subtle movement calmed me. “It’s hard for me to stay away from her. She makes me feel … things. Strong. Capable.” I remembered the power electrifying me when we touched, and I inflated with guilt. “Brave.”
“Ben treats you like you’re a very fragile thing. True.” I didn’t like that she compared the two of them that way, when I hadn’t even said his name. “But we both know it’s because he’s afraid to lose you.” I couldn’t look at her or respond. “Do you like her as a person? Outside of the power?”
I shook the ice around my cup. “I don’t really have a lot of time to think about it. I spend my free time being just terribly, terribly … scared.” I hadn’t said it in so many words before, and the honesty of it made my jaw hurt. Cleo heard the sincerity in my tone and watched me quizzically. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt. Again. And I don’t want to die.” The words were true. As little as I appreciated it, sitting in my room, drinking myself numb within the confines of my bed, I did not want to die. I was petrified of losing the small comforts I had. Petrified of being nothing.
Cleo turned to face me, folding one leg up in her seat. “This is going to work, Frankie.”
“What’s going to work?” I bellowed unreasonably. “We have nothing! We can’t win! All we can do is bring it in close, make it real convenient to kill us all! Fuck!” I flung my stupid delicious drink to the floor, covering my legs, the door, the bird, and the mice in coffee. They scurried and squeaked wildly in their few inches of space. I was instantly contrite about upsetting the animals. I petted the side of their boxes.
I popped my knuckles and tried to breathe. “I’m sorry,” I murmured out of obligation, though in truth I wasn’t at all.
Cleo held her pose during my outburst, her eyes glued to my performance. “If you’re finished,” she raised an eyebrow, “I was going to tell you that Jessamae and Ben have a plan.” She held her coffee close to her chest as though she feared I’d rip it from her clutches and toss it out the window.
Our arms were stacked with furry, winged beasts as we approached the front door. I’d cleaned the coffee from the floor mats with napkins from a McDonald’s, and only once I finished did Cleo offer to clean the mess by magic. I was tired and nearly regretted throwing the caffeine.
Ben opened the door before I could try. The boxes dug into the skin of my elbows, and he kissed my head as I slid past him. I set the bird and mice on the table and slumped into a chair.
“Why haven’t you given me a tattoo, Ben?” Cleo accused from outside.
“As if you’d ever let me mar that pretty skin of yours.”
“I’d still like the offer,” she snapped. She dropped the fish unceremoniously beside the other doomed creatures and strolled to her room. The little fish seemed shaken, but he had seemed that way when we bought him. I could hear the hearts of the poor white mice thumping within their cage. The bird had returned to its panicked flapping, rattling its box across the table. I didn’t want to kill them.
“Your legs look great, Princess,” Ben complimented.
I peeked at them under the table. They were a vibrant rose, like a sunburn fading in the shade. I’d forgotten about them as the pain left. I spun the meat of my calf for inspection. The scar I’d gotten running through sagebrush when I was six had been erased. New skin. “Thanks.”
Ben seemed in too good a mood.
“Where’s Jessamae?” I asked, wondering how long she remained in the house, alone with Ben, until coming up with some reason for leaving. Two minutes max, I thought.
He took a deep breath of Jessamae-free air. “She’s finding a spot. We’re stronger in an environment of balance.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Cut the fortune cookie bullshit, please?”
“A circle, Frank,” he replied in exasperation. “If we can find a circle in nature, we’ll be more effective within it.”
Fair enough. Nevertheless, our possible “advantage” made me reevaluate the competition between us and the demon Paimon—the devil required no balance at all. The harder we tried, the worse I felt.
“She found something.” Ben’s eyes zoned off into the distance. “She had to. She’ll be back soon. Four thirty-seven.” He blinked away the premonition and refocused his attention on the dusty old clock leaning against the wall on the kitchen counter. “Only twenty-seven more minutes of peace,” he said with a disheartened frown. Then his brown eyes seemed to darken. “We need to talk. Review the plan together.”
“Right, Cleo said something about that.” After I threw an iced coffee under your dash. “What exactly does this plan entail, Ben?”
Uncertainty morphed his face before he seemed to fortify himself and meet my eyes. “I’ll let her give you the details.”
And at exactly 4:37 p.m., Jessamae entered quietly through the heavy garage door. Her arms were empty, it was as if she just walked in off the street. Which she did. She had either apported or she ran the entire distance. The Honda was still at Ben’s.
She was excited. “It exists. The best I could possibly hope for. Is Cleo ready?” She looked expectantly between Ben and me. “We need to move. It’s a long drive. Night approaches.”
It was of absolute magic. As we hiked away from the car into the oncoming darkness of the hillside, I had imagined a flat circle of grass or even a bald patch of parched dirt. It was the inverse of my puny imagination: a small, surreal circle of bleached aspen trees huddled together in an isolated mob, as if the encroaching pasture were poisonous. The edges of the copse rounded perfectly, uncannily. They stood familial and lonely and other in the center of a hidden valley between towering ridges of rock and fallen pines. The crowd of trees was like a harsh and towering audience, and my incompetence gushed through me as if my heart pumped it rather than blood.
The mice peered up at me from the cardboard box in which I purchased them. “Only a little while longer.” One of you might go free. “We will,” might, “get through this.” The clerk at the pet store said they’d only need a few pellets, but I dumped the whole bag in the box. I hoped they gorged themselves to death before we got to them.
“Beautiful,” Cleo called. Ben carried the cardboard birdcage and Jessamae had the goldfish swinging lightly from the bag in her fist. Cleo, unburdened, raced ahead.
“We’ll just catch up then!” Ben yelled after her. She didn’t look back.
Crossing into the circle felt like climbing into a brambly bush. The trunks were packed so tightly together, they were like thick layers of veins in tissue. We wove our bodies through the white stripes, raking our hair and clothes across sharp, invasive sticks, until we deemed ourselves centered. Jessamae thrust the fish bag into the crook of Ben’s arm and started scouring the ground for dead twigs.
“Fuck you,” Ben breathed just loud enough and piled the trapped animals onto a mess of crispy leaves.
“A fire?” Cleo turned curiously to Jessamae.
“A small one,” she replied, clearing a tiny patch of earth between the trees. “We could easily lose control. Care is necessary.”
I kneeled to the ground and began sweeping the leaves aside. They were too flimsy under me. My hands and knees sliced readily through them, creating a leafy dust. I cradled one of the broken brown things in my hand until I felt the capillaries plump and green. I twirled the healthy stem between my thumb and pointer finger and scowled. “I still don’t know this brilliant plan I’m supposedly about to perform.” I ripped fleshy green strips off the leaf and watched them flutter to the ground like plucked wings.
Jessamae teetered sticks expertly above the bare dirt. “It isn’t complicated. You’ve done it before.”
Ben, who was circling our group with his palms facing outward, creating a psychic field, snorted at her lack of explanation. I appreciated the commentary.
“Well, I’ve done a few things before. Could you give me a clue as to which thing it will be this time?”
“Perez.” Pause. “Remember?” She sighed. “He was neither alive nor dead. He was something in between. Or something outside. But, together, we ended him. We can do that again.”
I remembered the crumpling funeral director sprinkled in with bursts of fire and graveyard dirt. “We got lucky with him.” I flicked the broken stem in my fingers to the ground. “He wasn’t even the final boss. He was an old funeral director, and he about killed us.”
Cleo’s eye roll was so powerful, they pulled her head back on her neck. “Your grandmother’s body gives the demon means to move, but it also limits it. It’s vulnerable.” She pulled out several loose strands from her heavy hair and draped them throughout the surrounding branches of our aspen cage.
“You broke its hand,” Ben added. I felt attacked when they all worked together like this. “Right? You broke its fingers inside the car.” He finished his circle and stood behind me. “If we can kill the body, the demon leaves. Nowhere to call home.”
I shuddered, imagining the bug-infested red skin that covered Pamela’s bones. I’d have to touch it. “We should have brought beer.”
Cleo said, “You just need to survive long enough to get your hands on it. Ben and I are here as distractions.” She glanced balefully my way, as if I had planned any of this and were using her on purpose.
Jessamae stood. The kindling was propped in a perfect teepee. “Ready?” she asked.
I stood up and brushed the dirt from my backside. Ben gave my shoulder a slap and stepped forward, rigid on my right.
“Nope,” I grunted. “Let’s get this shit show on the road.”
Jessamae, Ben’s lighter in hand, flicked the wheel against the teepee. A spark ignited within the dry sticks. “Stand at four points around the fire. Cleo east, Ben west, Frankie north.”
I didn’t know where north was, so Ben steered me to my place. The fire was already growing at an alarming rate.
“Channel the element. Channel each other.” Jessamae stood and held out her palms. In the setting sun, her rippled tan limbs were like the branches of another ghostly tree, leading us deeper into the wood. Cleo grabbed her hand readily. Ben followed her example with hesitation and distaste evident on his face. The two then reached for my hands—Ben gave an encouraging squeeze—and our circle was complete.
The flame spread fast. “Channel the element, channel each other,” Jessamae repeated.
The scent of the plumes epitomized the burnt and blistered summer that had ravaged us all this year. My thin skin cringed under the heat. I doubted I would ever feel comfortable channeling this element.
Despite its small beginnings, the flames danced nearly to our shoulders within mere moments. I was certain I did nothing to assist in fostering the damn thing. I hadn’t felt the consumption, the flame, as I had in the past. I only felt sweat drip under my arms, and the two hands in mine—Cleo’s silky palms and Ben’s supple scarred skin.
