Chrysalis, p.19
Chrysalis, page 19
I paused in front of his door, listening for a second. I could hear the normal ambient sounds of daily living—the hum of the air conditioner, the laugh track of a sitcom on the TV, and running water in the sink. Someone shut off the faucet. If it was Nick, then he was alone. There was just one heartbeat, going strong and steady.
I knocked on the door even as I sniffed the air. I didn’t smell anything cooking even though it was dinner time. My stomach cramped painfully at the reminder. I knocked again. “Coming,” he barked. My super-hearing picked up his mutter of “Hold your fucking horses.”
The door swung open with a loud creak. I’d like to say he was happy to see me, but, well…. “Oh God,” he said as he tried to close the door in my face.
I put out my hand to stop the door, and he shut it on my hand a little. “Ow!” I yanked back my hand. My poor pointer finger had suffered the most, and I stuck it in my mouth while glaring at him accusingly.
“Ow? What ow?” he said exasperatedly. He pulled the door back open a crack. “That’s why you don’t stick your hand in closing doors.”
“Just gimme a sec,” I said. “One second of your time and I’m gone.”
“One,” he said pointedly because he’s a dick. He tried to close the door again, and this time, I stuck my foot in the rapidly closing crack.
“Ow,” I exclaimed again.
“Well, stop sticking your freaking body parts in the freaking door jamb!”
“Just hear me out for God’s sakes. And if you don’t like what I have to say, I’ll leave.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. He looked ridiculous considering he was only five foot eight on a good day…until I looked up at his pugnacious little face. That expression meant business. “Make it snappy,” he said.
“I need your help—”
“Obviously.”
“And I’m running out of options. You have a lot of details about my past that I need to know. I need to figure out why these people are after me.” When he didn’t say anything, I pressed my point. “For old times’ sake, Nick. Please.”
He looked at me for a few moments and then said, “I don’t like it. Any of it.”
He swung the door shut in my face. I stared at the scarred metal surface for a second in disbelief before I pounded on the door with my fist. “Nick! Nicholas Shelby, you open this door.”
“I don’t want any Girl Scout cookies,” he announced. “Especially since your cookies are made of death and destruction.”
I put my hand on the knob and twisted it in frustration. The knob came off in my hand, leaving a circle in the door. I stared at it for a few moments, a little flummoxed. Well, that probably wouldn’t help my case. I tried to stick the knob back into the slot quietly. It fell back out, and I caught it with my hand.
“Come on, you bastard,” I muttered. “Get back in there.”
I slid it back in the slot again, and Nick yanked open the door. The knob clattered to the ground. “Could you maybe stop fucking my door with that thing?”
That was an image…I could do without. I stooped to pick it up. “Sorry. But I can fix that.”
Now that I wasn’t trying to be quiet, I was a little more aggressive with the door as I jammed it back in the slot. The metal dented around my hand. Now, not only was there a hole where the knob should be, but I’d warped the metal as well. In the shape of my fist.
We both stared at it for a minute. “I can fix that, too,” I said quickly.
“God, you’re bad news bears,” he fussed. “Come in and stop tearing up my house.”
I hustled to do so before he changed his mind. He eyed the bag on my shoulder as I stood in the living room awkwardly, unsure of where to put my things. I tried not to even breathe too hard, lest I break something else.
He gave me the onceover. “I assume Gray came to his senses and gave you the boot.”
“I was leaving anyway,” I said defensively. At his knowing look, my shoulders slumped. “Yeah, pretty much.”
He shook his head, presumably at how pitiful I was. “You can stay here for a few days, but that’s it, Cross.”
I nodded, even as I was internally coming up with strategies to extend that deadline. “Thank you. I appreciate…” He started walking off down the hallway, and I directed the rest of my statement at his back, albeit with a dose of sarcasm. “Your help. You’re so very kind and generous.”
I dropped my duffle at the foot of the couch and looked around. Not at the décor, but the entrances and exits and weak points for security. There was another door that led out the back and a fire escape with a ladder that looked like it had seen better days. There were too many bloody windows, too. I was sure they were a plus for potential buyers, but I could do with half as many, especially since they were so large.
After I checked all the windows and doors to make sure they were locked, then I looked at the décor. It was a stark difference from Gray’s place, that was for sure. Nick had managed to achieve a strange combination of stark and messy bachelor—his furnishings were sparse, but his stuff was strewn around everywhere.
The nerve center of his place appeared to be at his desk…at least, that’s what I gathered from the amount of empty Dr. Pepper cans littering the surface. He had a huge ergonomic chair and four flatscreen monitors, all of them playing the same bouncing ball screen saver.
I decided to make myself useful and grabbed a trash bag from the kitchen. Then I started collecting the flotsam and jetsam around his station. The disorganization made me itch. But it wasn’t filthy, and nothing smelled, so I could deal. Stacks of paper and books and piles of clothes were truly the least of my worries. I moved one of his binders on the desk, and the picture underneath froze me in my tracks.
My mother.
I sat the bag of trash down by my feet and picked up the picture, which appeared to have been photocopied from a yearbook. I glanced at some of the other papers near the binder. There was a picture of my father in there, too, and a family tree labeled Cross Genealogy. I heard a noise behind me and turned, only to find Nick standing there clutching a pillow and blanket, his face a little pink.
“What is all this?”
“I was doing some thinking about how much it must suck to wake up with everything wiped.”
“It does suck,” I agreed. It was ten pounds of suck in a five-pound bag.
“I thought this might help. I’m not finished quite yet, but I’m putting in most of the details that I know. And any pictures I could find.” He still refused to look me in the eye. “Anyway, I’m just trying to help.”
“Nick.” I was starting to feel emotional again. “This is really sweet—”
“Shut up.” He tossed the pillow and blanket combo at me. But for my preternatural reflexes, they would’ve hit me square in the face. “I have an extra bedroom, but it’s full of equipment right now, so you’re sleeping on the futon over there. It’s a miserable bitch, but it’s better than a park bench.”
“I’m starting to think I should’ve just gone to my apartment.”
“You mean the apartment that probably has more surveillance bugs in it than a CIA storage room?”
Yeah, that’s the one. I scowled. “Your hospitality needs work.”
“Well, I’m just preparing you. Now that you’ve gotten ousted from the Four Seasons, aka Gray’s place, you’re a beggar.” He pointed a finger in warning. “So don’t be fucking choosy. I don’t want to hear any complaints.”
“None,” I swore.
I proceeded to finish picking up trash and then made up the futon. The nicest descriptor I could come up with for it was lumpy. When I pressed my knee in the center to reach the corner with my sheet, it gave an almighty squeak. I sighed. “Miserable bitch” had probably been too kind of a moniker.
Nick was serious about his hospitality or lack thereof. We ate SpaghettiOs out of paper bowls for dinner that he’d nuked in the microwave. He had the nerve to offer me some grated parmesan cheese to sprinkle on top as if he’d whipped up a true feast. The beer that accompanied the meal was better. The ice cream afterward was the best.
He showered first and drained the hot water tank. I used that time to rig the front door shut until I could fix it properly. I bit my lip as I stood back and eyed my handiwork. I’d jammed the knob back in there so good that I hoped the fire escape was functional.
“What are you doing?” Nick’s suspicious voice came from behind me.
“Nothing.” I turned quickly, blocking his view of the door, only to find him in pajamas with an anime character on the front. “Nice jammies.”
“Shut up.”
“Okay, now we’re descending from a lack of hospitality into downright abuse,” I complained.
His mouth quirked. “I can’t help but notice that you’re still here.”
I harrumphed as he padded over to his desk. He took a moment to look at the clean, uncluttered surface and neat stacks of paper before turning and glaring at me. “What the fuck did you do?”
“It’s called cleaning, Shelby,” I said dryly as I unzipped my duffle and rifled through it for a pair of boxers and my toothbrush. “You should try it sometime.”
“I had everything perfectly organized,” he said as he plopped in his chair. He gave the Lysol-ed surface a mournful look. “I had a system, Cross.”
“How is creating a Dr. Pepper can graveyard a system?”
“You just wouldn’t understand.” He sighed heavily as he jiggled his mouse. He proceeded to sign in, a process that seemed to include a series of encrypted codes, two passkeys, and a fingerprint.
“I’m surprised you don’t have a retinal scan,” I said, a little amused. He proceeded to take off his glasses and put his eye closer to the screen. A blue light appeared over his face for a few seconds before it disappeared. The computer beeped once and logged him in. He sent me a smug look over his shoulder, and I barked out a laugh. “Never mind.”
I took a long shower, taking comfort in the simple, everyday acts of getting clean. Anything to keep from thinking about the fact that I was once again jettisoned from Gray’s life—this time, by his choice. That somehow made it worse. Necessary, but worse.
I wondered what he was doing right now. If he’d given Devin a call. Was he thinking of me at all? Or was he just glad to be done with everything related to Christian Cross?
I certainly would be.
I finished up by washing my hair with Nick’s weird-smelling shampoo, wondering the entire time why someone would want his hair to smell like birthday cake. By the time I finally meandered out of the bathroom in boxers, I felt a little better. My hair was still damp in places, so I slung a towel over my shoulder in case I got inspired to finish the job.
Nick was still at his computer, typing away, a fresh can of Dr. Pepper at his elbow. When I took the binder of my family from his desk, he didn’t bother to glance my way. “What did I say about taking things from my desk?”
I thumbed through the front anyway. “You were making it for me, weren’t you?”
“Yeah, but….” He glanced at me and seemed to get stuck somewhere around my abs, still a little damp from my shower. “Well, damn.”
I could feel my cheeks getting a little rosy. “Thank you?”
“Don’t let it go to your head. You’re walking, talking trouble, Cross. No amount of ripped and cut goodness can change that.” He finally started blinking again. “And I’m not finished with that binder. I like to finish things when I start them.”
“I get that. But what’s the harm if I look at what you’ve done so far?”
He sighed and waved me off. “Fine. Go ahead.” He gave me another thorough onceover before he shook his head. “Seriously, though. Damn.”
I chuckled as I took my prize to my nerve center, which was Madame Bitch the Futon. I got as comfortable as I could and proceeded to paw through the binder of everything Cross. The feel-good vibes of Nick’s collection were unexpected. I lingered over the school pictures of my sisters, Ellie and Jenna.
I rubbed a finger down the photocopy. I wanted to touch their chubby little faces and feel their baby-soft skin. We had the same eyes—the shape, the color, everything. Nick had gotten what little he could find from official sources, but there was only so much information he could net from school and medical records. I didn’t need or want to know how he’d gotten his mitts on the latter. But there were no baby books, no candid photos, no locks of hair. I should know something other than their blood types, vaccinations, and teachers’ names.
I turned the page on Ellie and Jenna with a heavy heart and found a dossier on my father, Sean Cross. I skimmed the page of general information of height, weight, blood type, college, and job history. There were also pages of articles that he’d published under a pseudonym, all about philosophy. He’d been a professor of the subject, which aligned with what I remembered of him. He’d been a softspoken, gentle, brilliant man. He’d also never farmed a day in his life, but he’d been determined to figure it out.
If the purpose of putting together this binder had been jogging my memory, it was working. My father had been prone to overthinking just about everything and daydreaming at the drop of a hat. I stared at the photo of him, my brow furrowed as I chased those memories. My mother’s eyes had always softened when she found him just staring out at nothing, lost in his thoughts of not how the world worked but why. He was always the one to soothe us when we got into trouble.
I had a flash of memory of dying my hair blue as a kid, which made my mother have an absolute conniption. My friend Jeremy and I had seen a music video, and all the members of the band had awesome blue hair. We’d been determined to replicate the look, come hell or high water.
I’d known my mother would bitch about it, but I’d never dreamed she’d be so pissed. And I never thought she’d make me dye it back immediately. I earned straight A’s, never gave my folks a drop of trouble, and unlike most of my friends, I did chores voluntarily. Not just laundry and taking out the trash, but hard chores—farm chores. Why couldn’t I have this one little thing?
She’d sent me to my room, and of course, I escaped out of the window the first opportunity I got. My father found me in the barn, feeding scraps to my favorite pig, Marshmallow.
He folded his arms over the railing next to her pen. “Aren’t you supposed to be in your room thinking about what you did?”
I’d stiffened when I first heard someone speaking, but then relaxed when I realized who it was. “It’s not a big deal.” I dug in the bucket of scraps, which was mostly vegetables. My mother insisted her pigs eat healthily. “It’s my hair, isn’t it?”
“Your mother has reasons for what she does. You don’t understand everything about our family and why we live the way we do."
“So tell me, then. What makes us so d-damn special?” I was defiant as I tossed Marshmallow a piece of butternut squash. I was also more than a little proud that I’d managed a curse right to my father’s face with only a tiny stutter.
His mouth trembled a little like he was suppressing a laugh. He cleared his throat. “When you’re older, I’ll tell you everything you need to know. But for now, we must stay under the radar. So the blue hair has to go.”
“But I promised Jeremy that if he did it, I would, too.”
My father shook his head. “I’m sorry. But you know the rules.”
“Fuck this,” I shouted. His eyes widened a bit at that one. I was getting better at this cursing thing by the second. “I can’t go to Jeremy’s party. I can’t join the baseball team. I can’t have any friends over. My whole life is just a never-ending stream of no, no, no.”
“Christian—”
“And why don’t we have any family? I don’t have any grandparents like Jeremy and Travis. Or any aunts or uncles or cousins….” My eyes started to water, and I gritted my teeth as I battled the tears back. Marshmallow made a squeal of impatience, done waiting for the treats, and I welcomed the distraction. I tossed her a couple of pieces of pumpkin. “And why can’t I be called Chrysalis anymore?”
“You know why.”
“Because we have to keep a low profile,” I said dully, reciting the words that had been drilled into my head for so long. “I feel like…like I don’t have any choices.”
I felt my father’s hand on my shoulder. “You have a lot of people out there who would agree with you, but I’m not one of them. I’ve never ascribed to the theory of predetermination.”
“What’s pre…predeter….” I made a sound of frustration. “Pre whatever you just said?”
“Predetermination. That your life is already decided…past, present, future. That everything is already known and will go as fate says it should.” He gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze. “But I believe that you always have choices. Every day, you wake up, open your eyes, and start making choices. That part isn’t up to you.”
“Then what is?”
“That you make the right ones.” He gazed at me. “Make the right ones, Christian.”
As usual, he’d distracted me from my anger with his propensity to pontificate. I broke his gaze and checked on Marshmallow, who was nosing the last piece of butternut squash into a position of her liking before she gobbled it up. “How will I know I’m making the right ones?”
“You don’t. All you can do is try. That’s the beauty of living an undetermined life, Christian.” He paused. “Chrysalis.”
My head jerked up, and I looked at him, only to find a slight smile on his face. No one had called me that in years. And suddenly, I felt very guilty. I knew that they worked very hard to keep us safe. Maybe I didn’t know why we had to live as we did. But whatever the reason, it was bad enough that they couldn’t even call me by my real name… a name they loved enough to give me before they even knew me.
“I’m sorry,” I croaked.
“It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” He took me in my arms, the scrap bucket smushed between us. After a second, he let me go long enough to take the bucket from my grip and put it on the ground. Then I was back in his arms again. “As long as we’ve got each other, it’s always going to be okay.”
