Brutal Precious
Page 23I could walk away. I could leave her, on this starry night, and walk away. I could choose not to form this memory, not to engage. But I long for it. I miss the fights, the blows, the wit. I miss her, even when my every perfect, lifeless, and calculated plan demands I never speak to her again, in the interest of not hurting her further. But I am human. I am selfish.
And I let myself be human and selfish, like she taught me.
“Boo,” I say. Isis jumps, withdrawing her lazily-circling hand from the water.
“Fuckstick Central! Are you trying to kill me before I attain my final form?”
“Do tell,” I settle beside her. She’s wearing a soft-looking sweater and jean shorts. “What’s your final form? No, wait, let me guess – insane witch.”
“Cyborg empress,” she corrects with a dignified sniff. “Of a small yet filthy rich country.”
I laugh. “And what will you do when you’ve regained your kingdom, your majesty?”
“Oh, you know; improve schools, build better roads, form a harem of beautiful European boys, the usual.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Really? I thought your type was more swarthy, more Eastern.”
“It was, until I learned it doesn’t actually matter what people look like on the outside, duh. Don’t you watch Dora the Explorer? Shit is straight informative. I’ve learned so much about treating people as equals. And like…backpacks.”
I smirk, and she hides her twisted smile in the crook of her arm.
“Alone in the middle of the night and hiding behind a studly centaur’s rump is no place for an empress,” I say.
“I wasn’t hiding,” she frowns. “Hiding is for babies. And ninjas.”
“You wanna go somewhere with me?” She asks.
I look up. “Where?”
“Somewhere. Anywhere but here. Anywhere Sophia never got to go. Let’s go to the moon.”
I look up at the silver disc. “It’ll be cold.”
“We’ll bring jackets.”
There’s another quiet. Isis huffs.
“Where’d you get that thing on your eyebrow?”
“I ran into a doorframe,” I answer smoothly.
“Where, at Samwise Gamgee’s house?”
“Samwise lives in a gardener’s shack, not a house.”
“Oh my god who cares,” she throws up her hands. “The point is, that scratch looks nasty.”
“Yes. That’s what I’ve been doing all along. Nastying up my face so no woman will ever look twice at me again.”
She pushes her chestnut hair off her shoulder. It’s gotten so long – past her shoulder blades - the faded purple streaks now lavender with a touch of white where her hairline begins. Her bangs are messy, in dire need of a trim, shading the warmest of hazel eyes and gracing her flushed cheekbones. Her lips are still endearingly small and pouty. A year has changed her. She’s grown taller ever-so-slightly, a mature sort of beauty sending out its first roots into her face. Her lashes are long and dark as ever, and only when she blinks four times do I realize I’m staring and look away quickly.
I owe her the truth. I owe her at least that much.
“I left Northplains because I couldn’t stay,” I say. “Because I didn’t know what to do with myself. Because I was hurting, and I was afraid I would hurt people with my own hurt. People like you.”
Isis is quiet, hand slowing in its caress of the water.
“I took the car and drove for days. I don’t even remember most of it. When I snapped out of it, I was in Vegas. I spent weeks there, in a motel room.”
“Doing what?” She asks softly.
“Fighting. Fighting, and drinking. There was a club in the lower east end, and I’d go there every night, beating up tourists or seasoned veterans or whomever wanted a piece of me. I got beat up more than I did the beating, unfortunately. But I wanted to be hurt. I wanted to feel pain, to feel something, anything. Anything other than the horrible nothingness that closed in after the funeral.”
I see her swallow, her fists clenched in her lap.
“The guilt drove me like a demon. It still does, a little. But thanks to Gregory, it didn’t swallow me alive.”
“What do you mean?”
“He found me. God knows how. But he tracked me down, and just as I was running out of money, he offered me a job, and training. Something to devote my energy to, to strive for, to pour myself into. I’d been so afraid of losing control for so long. But it’s been that way since my father died, I think. That’s when it started. I lost control in the forest, and caused that man’s death. Terrified, I tried to control myself even harder, keeping people at arm’s length so they wouldn’t get hurt. But then you came along.”
She flinches, and I slide my hand into hers under the water and hold it, lightly.
The flush on her cheeks grows redder, and I smile. But then I realize I’m holding her hand, and disengage quickly. Motions like that are not helping her move on to a better man. None of this is. And yet I’m too selfish to stop talking, to walk away. I want the sun. I want to be warmed again on her heat, if only for a fleeting moment.
“Gregory taught me to control myself in a deeper way than I was doing alone. He took me to the desert, a ranch house he owns in the middle of nowhere, and he made me work. I hauled water and firewood and struggled with the stallions. Horses hate me, by the way. And they hate snakes. But primarily me.”
“The difference between you is marginal,” she muses, grinning. I flash her a smirk.
“Gregory made me fight – him, mostly, and sometimes his ranch hand; a giant of a Najavo man. Gregory showed me that control isn’t suppression – it’s expression, expressed when and where you choose and with deliberate purpose. After three months, he said I was ready to join his team. And I did.”
“Spying,” she says.
“Information gathering,” I correct. “Only people who watch too much TV call it spying.”
“So you’re spying on Nameless.”
I nod. “Trying to. He’s very secretive, and more clever than I gave him credit for. But with enough time, we’ll get solid evidence.”
“What’s he done? Other than ruin a fat girl’s life?” She asks, steely.
“Provided his hacking services to a number of internet black market kingpins involved with opium, meth, child slaves. The list isn’t pretty. He probably didn’t know exactly what he was doing, but he knew it was illegal, and that’s enough to put him away.”