“Ha,” I answer. “I definitely don’t remember saying that. I haven’t really been in love with anyone, honestly, since handsome Laurie here.” I playfully elbow Lawrence as I say that last bit.
Instead of teasing me back, like I expected, Lawrence firmly sets his coffee down on the table and jumps up. He hurriedly ducks behind the counter and grabs a broom, all but attacking the floor as he becomes very suddenly invested in sweeping. The other four of us make uncertain eye contact.
“You okay, Lawrence?” Sarah asks.
“Yeah. I just need to finish closing up,” he says gruffly. The other three are fooled, but I know Lawrence better. I signal to them to give me a moment, and follow Lawrence as he disappears behind the forest-green EMPLOYEES ONLY curtain.
“Lawrence?” I say in a low voice as the heavy scent of coffee beans fills my nostrils. Lawrence turns to me, and his eyes look watery even in the room’s scant lighting. He suddenly slams his hand down on one of the shelves, sending a few bottles of creamer spinning off the edge. I cringe, and he drops to the ground to pick them up.
“What’s going on?” I ask as gently as I can. He stretches for one of the creamers that rolled under the wire shelves. “Lawrence, please.”
“I just…,” he says toward the cement floor. He shakes his head. “It won’t make any sense. God, sometimes I wish I could forget, too….”
“Come on, at least try to tell me what’s up,” I say, lowering myself to the ground beside him. I take a creamer from his hand and wrap my fingers around his. Lawrence sighs and sits up. He squeezes my fingers lightly and pulls his hand away.
“It’s…” He brushes a few coffee grounds off his jeans, his eyebrows furrowing like they do when he’s choosing his words carefully. “It’s just that it makes me…sad…to hear you say you haven’t loved anyone since me.”
“That’s it?” I say, wondering if the shock registers in my voice. “That’s what you’re so upset about?”
Lawrence shakes his head. “I told you it wouldn’t make sense….”
He’s got a point. I mean, I’m glad he isn’t thrilled that I’m single, but punching shelves seems extreme.
“I’m sorry,” he says, shaking his head like he’s casting the emotion away. “You know, it’s nothing. You’ve just done…you’re such a good friend to me that I guess I wish you still had someone, that’s all.” He gathers the bottles and sets them back on the shelf in a row.
“I don’t still want Aaron, though. And besides, I’ve got you and Ophelia and a handful of Connect Four chips.” I grin. “I’m fine.”
“Right. Sorry, Vi. Minor freakout.”
“Okay, then we can go back to playing Super Monopoly Dare without you smashing things?” I say, folding my arms.
“Back to playing what? We really need new games,” Lawrence says, rolling his eyes. There’s still some hint of sorrow there; it sort of reminds me of the way I used to feel, back when I was so destroyed over breaking up with him. He steps around me and hurries back toward the board game. Still confused, I return to my circle of friends just in time to play my turn.
thirty
Jinn
HEARINGS AND OTHER official Caliban business are held in a beautiful building called the Centerhouse. It has bright white pillars, a silver domed top, shining windows, and elaborate murals on every wall. I shove my hands deep into my pockets and try to avoid eye contact with the dozens of jinn milling around. I’ve been here before, when I went through ifrit training, but never for something as unpleasant as a hearing. Especially when I know I don’t have a chance of coming out unscathed.
The hearing room is large, mostly to make space for the giant table that stretches horizontally in front of me. Sitting behind it, paying little attention to me, are the Ancient Jinn. They appear to be of varying ages: one so old that his skin looks like tattered leather and his hair is shockingly white, another who looks only a decade or so older than me. Regardless, they are all centuries old, even though they may not look it; it all depends on how often they’ve been earthbound.
I walk to a much smaller table in the center of the room, where the ifrit is standing. We exchange glances as I come to a stop beside him. One of the Ancient Jinn—the one with the leathery skin—turns his cloudy eyes to me. I bow toward him to signal that I’m ready to begin. As ready as I’ll ever be, anyway.
“Let’s start, shall we?” the leathery Ancient says, his voice little more than a whisper. He is the oldest of them all, and he sits at the center of the table. He tilts his chin up to see me from beneath caterpillarlike white eyebrows.
“You have broken”—the leathery Ancient glances down at a list, and despite his thick eyebrows, I can see his eyes widen at the list’s length—“all three protocols. Numerous times.” The Ancient begins to count the offenses, tapping a pencil along the list. He flips to the next page, sighs loudly, and looks back up with an expression of disbelief. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Nothing,” I respond, holding my hands out at my sides. “Nothing. Well, except that she commanded me to call her by name, so that shouldn’t count. And she commanded me to be visible once, so…that, too.”
The leathery Ancient looks pleased. “Ah, good. Then that brings it down to…” He looks at the list again, and the pleased expression disintegrates. The Ancient sighs and puts his hand to his head.
“Why break the others then? The ones that weren’t a direct order?” the youngest-looking of the Ancients asks, his voice bold compared to the leathery Ancient’s faded whisper.
I take a deep breath. “By choice. I broke them by choice.”
A female Ancient folds her arms. “It is not our way to be a part of their world, as you tried to be. The three protocols are in place to protect not only you, but the rest of us as well. You’ve risked our entire livelihood. Do you want to be responsible for knowledge of our kind getting out into the human world? To see fellow jinn whisked away daily by greedy mortals?”
“No,” I say softly.
“He should be bound,” one of the Ancients says, giving me a cold stare. “He must repay our kind for his actions.” Another Ancient agrees, then another.
Bound. Alone, imprisoned in some mortal object. I don’t want to be alone. I start to feel dizzy as the other Ancients chime in.
“He’s never broken protocol before, though,” a younger Ancient says.
“But so many were broken this time,” another responds.
“Though the number is reduced greatly when we consider the fact that his master has forgotten him.”
“Still, he should be bound so that he might understand the severity of his actions.”
“He’s young, though. A single mistake isn’t worthy of stripping him of years of his life. Before the protocols were enforced so well, we all broke them just as often.”
“I certainly never broke that many.”
“It’s just that being bound is rather severe for a first-time offender.”
The leathery Ancient interrupts the chatter. “But are there any other suggestions for how he might repay his debt to our kind?” No one speaks. One of the female Ancients gives me an especially disgusted glare.
“I have one,” a voice says, falling like warm water on my frozen body. It’s the ifrit. The ifrit doesn’t look at me, his face firm and still.
“And it is?” the leathery Ancient asks.
The ifrit straightens his tunic. “Despite the fact that he made poor choices while earthbound, he has proven to have a heightened awareness of the human mind and condition. He once applied to be an ifrit, though he left the program. Despite this, I feel that becoming an ifrit would be a wise use of his abilities. More so than being bound on Earth.”
No. I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to see Viola having forgotten me. And I won’t be able to stay away from Viola—I know I won’t. It’s as bad as being bound. Worse. It’ll be horrible being alone, but at least I won’t have to see her without me.
The leath
ery Ancient frowns for a moment and runs a hand over his giant eyebrows. The other Ancients shuffle through paperwork, some nodding, others frowning. The ifrit continues to avoid my eyes.
“You believe him capable of pressing effectively? It states here that in training he wouldn’t perform a fairly simple press…a car crash or the like…”
“I believe he’ll have different preferences for the way he presses. As all ifrit do,” the ifrit says.
“And he would have to leave his job as a flower boy—”
No. Don’t make me do this.
“—to join the ifrit, naturally.”
The Ancients lean across the table, mumbling to one another just out of my earshot.
“All right then,” the leathery one says as the other Ancients lean back in their chairs. “It’s your decision how your debt will be repaid. You can be bound in an Earth object for a period of six months or be in the service of the ifrit program for eighteen months. You will have to leave your current job, repeat the ifrit training, and prove yourself to be effective at pressing.”
Six months. It’s just six months. And I can return and still deliver flowers. How could I press a mortal, especially now? And how can I go back to Earth without finding her…without it killing me every time I see her moving, living, changing without me? It’s not fair.
“Choose the job,” the ifrit says to me in a nearly inaudible whisper.
“I don’t want it,” I reply hoarsely.
“He said he’ll take the position with the ifrit, sir,” the ifrit answers for me. My mouth opens to argue, but the Ancient begins speaking too soon.
“Stop by the lobby to fill out the necessary paperwork,” the leathery Ancient instructs me. He snaps his fingers, and a stack of papers appears on the table in front of me. “And I hope I don’t see you at a hearing again.” Then the Ancient Jinn, one by one, rise and leave through a door behind the table before I can recover enough from shock to string together coherent protests. The ifrit turns on his heel and strides toward the door while my frustration paralyzes me.
How could this happen? I should never have told him about not wanting to return. This is his personal revenge on me. My hands tremble as my anger breaks through my body’s unwillingness to move, and I turn to the ifrit.
“Hey!” I shout just as the ifrit reaches the hearing room door. The ifrit turns. I grab the paperwork and run toward him, my face red and my mind reeling.
“What?” the ifrit asks.
“I trusted you! I told you those things in confidence, and you used them against me. You know I didn’t want to return, and now…a year and a half! How could you?” I snap at him, shaking the papers in front of me.
The ifrit is silent for a moment as he studies my face. “We both know you always would have made a great ifrit. You just never liked to hurt them. They matter to you—they always have. I’ve never cared how I accomplished the press.” The ifrit shakes his head, a look of wonder on his face. “I can read mortals. I can read you. You will never be happy in Caliban again, not really.”
“What are you talking about?” I answer bitterly. I already know this. Believe me, I know this.
“Despite it all, you’re still one of us. And as one of us, I want you to be happy, my friend. I thought you would be, once you got back home, but it isn’t so. Jinn aren’t supposed to feel broken, as mortals do, yet here you are, seemingly broken with no way to heal. I see it in your eyes the same way I see what’s necessary to press a mortal to wish. So if the need to feel whole again is that dependent upon the girl, here you go. Full access to her, unmonitored protocol, so long as you don’t forget your obligations to your kind.”
I press my lips together in fury and pain. “She’s forgotten me. It’s over. I don’t want to see her again, and now I’ll have to. I won’t be able to help it. I’ll have to sit back and just watch her…live. Without me.”
The ifrit shrugs. “Then I overestimated your feelings for her.”
My jaw drops. “How dare you? Because I don’t want to see that she’s forgotten me?”
“No. Because nothing is really ever gone or forgotten. If she’s a piece of you, and you of her, then memory is merely an obstacle—our power covers the memory, it doesn’t erase it. And I should think, at least based on what I saw in your eyes last night, that it’s an obstacle worth going up against. Unless, of course, I overestimated your feelings for her.”
I fall silent and look down, then back at the ifrit. The ifrit sighs. “I became an ifrit to save the lives of my fellow jinn. What kind of life saver would I be if I let you sit here and wither away in paradise?”
Just an obstacle. Just an obstacle.
I meet the ifrit’s eyes. “What happened to all your talk about birds and fish having nowhere to live?”
The ifrit shrugs. “I suggest you start holding your breath, my friend,” he says, then pushes through the hearing room doors. “I still think you’re insane, for the record!” he calls out just before the doors swing shut. The breeze causes my paperwork to fly from my hands, scattering like leaves across the marble floor. I gather the papers slowly, with a strange, buzzing feeling in my heart.
thirty-one
Viola
IT’S MIDNIGHT, AND the coffeehouse closed almost an hour ago. Everyone headed home—a few to others’ houses, still fewer to parties. Lawrence and I sit in his greenhouse, each of us lying on a plaid couch and watching the television via the reflection on the glass ceiling.
“I’m going to get a drink. Do you want anything?” I ask, standing and stretching my arms above my head. Lawrence, still smelling strongly of coffee and vanilla, shakes his head.
My hand meanders through the refrigerator until I come across a can of soda. I’m about to open it when I hear Lawrence’s voice, muffled by distance and the sound of the television. I sigh. Lawrence’s mother has been clinging to the belief that Lawrence will grow out of “the gay thing” and get back together with me. Nearly every time I come over, she corners Lawrence and asks him about our “future.” I’ll have to go save him from her. Again.
I pause in the hallway that leads to the greenhouse, waiting for a lull in their conversation so my interruption will be smoother.
“How do you know she won’t remember when she sees you?” Lawrence says in a loud whisper.
I strain to hear the response, but can’t make out another speaker.
“You’ve been back on Earth almost a week now! You’ll never know if you don’t take a risk and show yourself. I hate you in that uniform, by the way—”
No one responds.
“All I’m saying is—”
“Who are you talking to?” I ask, once I’ve decided that there’s no way Lawrence’s mother is there—she’s way too loud to go undetected twice. I lean against the greenhouse doorframe, eyebrows raised. Lawrence sits up quickly and looks like an animal in a car’s headlights.
“Myself,” he says. “Lines from a play the theater department is doing later this year.”
“What play?” I ask.
“Never mind,” Lawrence answers and sighs.
“What? I’m just asking.” Wow. Calm down already.
“No, no, I’m not stressed at you. Just…I don’t know. But never mind.”
“Um…okay,” I say. I realize I left my drink in the kitchen, and cast Lawrence a wary look as I turn back for it. I think he needs to lay off the espresso after closing.
“Viola.”
I stop. The voice that called my name isn’t Lawrence’s. I whirl around.
A boy with golden skin stands beside the couch Lawrence is sitting on. He has curly black hair that’s so dark it reminds me of the night sky, and he’s wearing a dark blue tunic with a swirly I embroidered over the left chest. Clutched in one hand is a bouquet of roses; each rose is a different color—red, dark pink, peach, coral, yellow, lavender, and several in colors I didn’t even know roses came in. Lawrence gives the boy a small smile before standing up beside him.
When did
he come in?
The boy sets the roses on the end table. He’s been holding them so tightly that all the lower leaves are crushed.
“Lawrence? Are you going to introduce me?” I ask. The way the boy stares at me, with dark, unwavering eyes, is a little unsettling. Strangers shouldn’t stare this way. The boy takes a step toward me. I take one backward. He kind of freaks me out, but in a way that’s more like butterflies than fear.
“You don’t know him?” Lawrence asks cautiously. “Look again.”
What is he getting at? I study the boy a moment longer. There’s something gentle in his eyes, something that might make me smile if I weren’t so confused about the whole thing. One thing I am sure of, though: I don’t know him.
“Have you lost your mind?” I ask Lawrence, forcing my gaze away from the stranger.
“Look, I know I’m being weird, but just listen, all right?” Lawrence replies. “Think. Think hard, Vi. About painting, and dating Aaron, and the mall carnival and…the marshmallow game we play. Are you sure you don’t already know this guy?”
Fine. I try to focus on Lawrence’s words. Painting, Aaron, carnivals, that marshmallow game. None of them has anything to do with the boy, who is now staring so hard that I fold my arms over my chest protectively.
“No,” I say when I’m totally sure the boy’s face doesn’t exist in my memory.
“You’re sure.”
“Yes.”
“It’s fine,” the boy tells me, cutting Lawrence off. Lawrence shakes his head and sighs. The boy looks at me and motions to the roses on the end table. “These are for you. I’ll just…leave them here,” he says, and touches them gingerly. He leaves his hand on them for a moment, his fingertips resting on a blue rose. There’s a firm look on his face, like he’s forcing himself to remain emotionless. The boy steps back and turns to leave the greenhouse by way of the door farthest from me.