“What?” If he has even the slightest plan, I want in on it.
“There’s a way to bring others back with you.”
“Like bring him with us? That’s perfect!” Why didn’t I think of that? Or Chloe for that matter? “Maybe we can bring Chloe back, and we don’t have to reanimate her?”
“From what I understand it’s easier to rebuild. But not your father, he needs another option.”
“I’ll explain everything to him.” My mind races with the possibilities. “Once he knows what’s waiting for him, he’ll gladly come with us.”
“It doesn’t work like that. If two come in, only two are allowed to go back.”
“So one of us will have to stay?”
“I think so.” He rubs my back. “I don’t exactly know the rules. Go back and ask Chloe. She might understand the ins and outs.”
“Did she tell you about these rules?” I ask.
“No, it wasn’t her. Anyway, I don’t think we should try anything today. Just go down and hangout with your dad.” He rubs my shoulders up and down in an effort to encourage me. “I’ll try and get some more details for you when we get back.”
“Who has the details?” My brows narrow in suspicion.
Gage doesn’t say anything, instead his lips press into a white solid line.
“Logan?”
He gives a hard exhale.
“He’s known how to bring my dad back all along and he wouldn’t tell me?” I can’t believe this.
“It’s not like that.”
“Easy for you to say. Your dad doesn’t die in a fire over and over each time you visit.”
“I know, I know.” His eyes oscillate beneath his lids. “Skyla, we need to be careful. We could all burn and it’ll be over. We have to do this right.”
***
I storm downstairs.
“Skyla?” My father calls.
I head into the dining room and fall into a tight embrace with my dad. I take in his scent, feel his stubble riddled face against my cheek. I hate this. More than anything, I hate it.
“You remember when I was little and you would pick me up and spin me really fast? I used to say it was like a carousel.” Maybe he’ll tell me. It can evolve naturally and we could all go back to Paragon today.
“Yup. I can still do it if you want to. Of course I’ll need a wheelchair after— permanently.” He pulls his cheek to the side. “What’s going on?”
“I miss that. I miss you. It feels like I’m growing up so fast, like my life here just blinked by.” I pick at a stain on my jeans.
“Well that’s sort of the way it is. And when you get to be my age, life starts going downhill at an amazing velocity.” He dive-bombs his hand through the air. “It’s all bills all the time, no room for fun.”
“Don’t you think our life together was fun?”
“What do you mean was? Of course it is.”
Two black figures move across the lawn in the backyard, tall as ladders. Long black whips trail after them, and I’m afraid they’re tails.
I take in a breath and forget to let go.
“You OK?”
I want to say, no. I want to say, I think I see giant scary Fems creeping around in the backyard, but don’t. Instead I say something that even surprises me. “I think I’m going to get some air.”
***
My first inclination is to run upstairs to Gage, get the heck out of this Fem riddled Dodge, and return to Paragon ASAP, but I don’t. If something happens to Gage because of my incessant need to visit my father, I’ll never forgive myself.
It’s warm outside. My flesh doesn’t know what to make of this luscious humid air. It feels like spring—like the summer that never was on Paragon. My heart melts when I see my mother’s lush, pink rose garden. There’s so much I’ve forgotten about, so much that I took for granted.
My old swing-set sits lank like a rusted out cadaver. Mia can hardly use it without the metal splitting or a piece falling apart.
Something thumps down hard on the lawn behind me. I turn my neck just enough, frozen at the thought of what it might be.
Two large humanoid panthers the color of a moonless sky squat with their arms spread out in front of them—claws like razors. Their tails cut through the air with ferocity.
Shit.
I can’t breathe, can’t move, and suddenly I badly regret not having Gage by my side.
I close my eyes and say his name. My eyes dart around searching the sky—the fence, hoping for his overgrown bird. I know in less than one minute I’m going to scream. I’m going to unleash all unholy hell, my father will see me, and we’ll both combust out of fear.
The beast on the left hisses and contorts his face into a heart-stopping grimace.
A flat nose shovel with a long yellow handle leans against the outside wall of the garage. I make a run for it. It’s funny the things that go through your mind when you’re convinced you’re going to die. I think of Ellis and how he went to get the hammer for me, so I could bash in Carly’s windshield.
I strangle the wooden stick, just as something with the heft of small vehicle thrashes me against the wall.
A series of primal groans emote from my chest. My skull feels fractured in multiple places.
It’s touching me!
I scream a gurgled cry. The putrid smell bites right through my open mouth and I taste it. Then I remember what the shovel was for. I tighten my grip on the shovel and squirm around and dig my foot into its stomach. I think of Carly and her Logan-loving ways, and push. The beast shoots back a good four feet, and I marvel. It’s just like that day at the pool when I sent her sailing.
Out from the left, the other one squats into position. I lunge forward and spear the shovel at its chest, but it moves and ditches my efforts. The shovel slips from out of my hands.
I can’t lose it. I can’t let my dad burn. I’ll never see Logan. I’ll never see anyone if I’m taken captive, or worse, eaten by Fems and regurgitated in pieces out on the lawn.
I don’t fight the Fem for the shovel. The flat steel tip nose comes at me and I duck just in time to miss my own decapitation. In my mind’s eye, I see Carly. Her fake innocent face, her legs wrapped around Logan by the pool, and I snap.
The Fem’s tail wraps around my arm like a lariat, and I clasp onto it, curl it into me like a dancer. I don’t mix words or ideas or any other crap. I dig my hands in its throat until my fingernails break through its rubberlike flesh, and it writhes in a series of quick jerking motions, scratching at the top of my head, opening my scalp like tearing through paper.
Green thick liquid runs down my hand, already partially congealed. I think of Carly and the way she flips her long blonde hair into Logan as I let the Fem fall to the ground, place my foot on his chest, and let out all of my jealousy inspired frustration by twisting its head around.
Staggering towards the center of the yard, I spin in a careful circle looking for the next one.
“I’m ready,” I hiss, full out of breath.
There’s a slight breeze, initiating the sound of rustling leaves from up in the oak tree with its hundred-year wingspan. Before I can look, he pounces on me—flat on my back with a thousand crushing pounds. I can’t breathe. No air. I squeeze my eyes shut and make myself feel like I’m falling, until I do.
Then I’m gone.
41
Gone
I jump out of bed and text Gage.
Where are you? ~S
A warm gush of liquid slides down the side of my face and my fingers press into it. Blood. I’ve brought my injuries back with me.
I wait with morbid patience for ten straight minutes before I decide to go back, but first I need to get Chloe.
I close my eyes and pray nothing happens to Gage in the meantime, after all it’s been two freaking years.
Chloe is busy dancing around her room with the dresses she’s going to be kidnapped and buried in.
“I really hate to break up the party, but you have to c
ome with me, back to L.A.” I grip her by the shoulders. “I left Gage.”
***
Chloe and I head back immediately. My bedroom looks disrupted. The closet has vomited out its belongings all over the floor and my desk is turned upside down.
“Chloe?” My voice is strangely even keeled. “It wasn’t like this before. Gage wouldn’t do this.” I’m shaking now.
I burst into the hall with Chloe by my side.
“Dad?” I shout his name as I speed down the stairs. “Daddy?” It comes out a frightened cry. The dining room table is overturned, and his laptop is sprawled out on the floor.
My entire body seizes.
“It’s the Fem,” I say, looking up at the broken window in the living room. I make a mad dash out to the backyard and find the Fem I killed has disappeared, save for a patch of dead grass where I left him. It’s brittle and dry, but not one drop of green fluid, nothing.
“You think they’ve taken my dad and Gage?” I think back to the underground layer at Paragon where Ezrina took me all those weeks ago. “We’ll never find them,” I say just beneath a whisper.
“We’ll find them.”
“You think this changes things?” I ask.
“I think this changes everything.”
Chloe and I spend the entire morning and afternoon searching the neighborhood for clues, but all traces of Dad and Gage end inside the house.
In less than two minutes, the old me is going to come home from school pissed off about a boy who slipped his jockstrap in my backpack. It’s the last lucid memory I have before I learn about my father.
“Sit on the porch and explain the situation to me before I come inside,” I tell Chloe. “I’ll do the rest.”
“Are you insane? You’ll be in a mental institution before midnight. They’ll hop you up on so many meds you won’t remember your name, let alone the idea there were two of you.”
“True.” A flash from my brief stint at the psych ward races through my mind. “Then…just tell her your boyfriend is running around trying to get the people who ransacked my house. Tell her…me, that he’s nice, and to help him because he’s homeless.” Shit.
I watch through the window as the old me comes plodding down the street. I look so much younger, even my gait is lanky and awkward. Old me spots Chloe and approaches her with a hesitant interest. I can hear Chloe’s voice murmur through the window. There’s silence on my part as she tries to explain, then I see my hand cup over my mouth in horror.
A hard line creases my forehead as my eyes squint into half moons. That must have been what I looked like when they told me about my father. I see more of Mia in myself than I do in the me I know now. I look so frightened—desolate.
Chloe gets up and gives her a hug. I wish I could do the same.
So maybe I didn’t think through how I was going to get out of the house or Chloe was going to get back in. So I probably shouldn’t be too surprised when the old me hears a noise in the kitchen and snatches the baseball bat from out of the entry closet.
Shit. I’m going to get my brains bashed in, by me.
“I hear you,” she shouts. I can see my blonde hair crowning the corner before anything else.
The whack of the bat lands hard on the kitchen counter and bits of peach tile explode into shards.
“I’m not afraid to use this,” I hear me shout, thrashing the bat against cabinetry. I hear glass shatter—wild echoing thumps—water splashing all over the floor.
I make a mad dash out the broken window in the living room scraping the flesh on my new Chloe arm in the process. I land cockeyed on my foot and manage to twist my ankle hard on the concrete below, but I keep running.
“I see you!” I can hear myself scream from the back of the house. I run and dive onto the grass and watch as the bat goes flying through the air—tumbling over itself with gravity-defying fury. I watch in horror as it comes towards my head, dead on like a Tomahawk missile.
Chloe lands on top of me. I can feel the laughter bubbling out of her chest.
We wake up in her bed, and she’s still laughing.
42
I Can Explain
I really can’t explain why Gage has gone missing. So I don’t bother. Instead, I hitch a ride to school with Brielle and Drake, ignore the wild texting spree from Logan, and try to brush off Marshall’s incessant barrage of possibilities during math class. Sometimes ignorance is bliss—it’s difficult to imagine when that might be. But for today I have to pretend I’m someone else, not Skyla Messenger—most idiotic angel on earth who misplaced her boyfriend and inadvertently kills her father each times she visits.
I try to distract myself as I drag from class to class. I let Ellis act like a kook and gush over how much money I’m going to save his dope habit just by the sheer fact he can repeatedly steal his own stash.
“How are you able to steal it again and again?” I’m puzzled by this. “If it’s gone last year, that means you never smoked it, right? So if you smoke it now how is it still there a year ago?”
“You make less sense than I do, and I’m high.” He adjusts his backpack against the bench. Brielle and Drake have gone off campus for lunch because it’s finally not raining, and you can actually make out the road. Or they probably just wanted to make out, either or.
“I lost Gage,” I confess.
“He hooking up with Carly again?”
“What?” It comes out a shrill cry.
“Relax. It was like months before you got here. And I know how much you hate her.”
“Hate her more now.” I fold my arms across my chest.
“So where’s Gage?”
“In L.A. being eaten by overgrown panther’s with horrible human-like faces.”
“Remind me never to light drive with you again.”
“What about the stash?”
“Except then.”
Michelle walks by. Her entire face is pasty and swollen.
“Looks like she’s rotting.” Ellis says as she passes.
“She’s being bitch slapped by Fems.” I let out a hard sigh. It’s my fault everyone I know is suffering. “I hear that kind of activity picks up this time of year.”
“I’m counting on it. They liven up my Halloween party. It’s cheap, violent, wicked fun.” He gives a greasy smile.
A shadow falls over us. For a second I’m afraid to look up, afraid at what monstrous nightmare has decided to embellish the landscape, but I take a small peek.
“Logan.” I jump to my feet and give him a quick hug.
“Where is he?” His eyes round out to boyish circles, and for a moment I think he’s going to kiss me.
I’m afraid to say, so I bite down on my lip in an effort to stave the truth from vomiting out.
“Where is he?” He asks with a little more agitation. His amber eyes swirl like a kaleidoscope. There’s just enough real anger to fuel the conversation. I don’t think we’ll need to rely on any fake intensity here.
There are two ways I can do this—the truth and a lie.
“Maybe you pissed him off,” I say. I think the lie has more fortitude right now. “Maybe he couldn’t handle all the crap you give him and he swam off the island.” I don’t want to clue Ellis in on how desperate I am to have Logan help me, either.
It might work to my benefit to have Ellis think I’m over both Logan and Gage and into him. That way I could get him to deliver a list of Counts, in exchange for his stash.
Do I even hear myself?
I ponder the irony of how I’ve become a glorified drug dealer—the angelic vessel of all things illegal. If I’m going to do that, maybe I should have a fake relationship with Marshall and have him bring my father back.
The bell rings, and Ellis takes off.
“He’s stuck in L.A. We have to go back and get him,” I plead.
Logan’s eyes close, and he takes in a quick breath.
“I can’t.” He shakes away the thought.
“Yes, you can. If I can do it, anybody
can,” I plead. “Are you afraid? Is this like some kind of phobia you have? Gage is afraid of Mastodons and you’re afraid of time travel?” A tiny part of me is thrilled that I might be braver at something than Logan.
“It’s not that.” He shifts uncomfortably and puts his hand over mine. If I time travel, there’s a good chance I won’t come back.
Yes you will. I swear I won’t lose you. I’m taken by the fact he’s holding my hand right here in the quad.
He shakes his head. A sad slow look spreads across his face.
A thin layer of clouds drag over the sun like a dirty veil and darkens the landscape.
Skyla, there’s something I have to tell you. He gives an uncertain smile. I’m not from this time. He closes his eyes briefly. I’m from the past.
43
Loaded
I waited all day for school to get out, then for his shift to finish at the bowling alley before he could meet me in the butterfly room.
So when my parents died... He pauses.
I rub the back of his hand with my thumb encouraging him to go on. Skyla, my Uncle Barron is really my brother… he and our older brother, Liam, came back to the day of the fire and rescued me. I was a baby in my mother’s arms, and he saved me. He ends his near hour-long narrative.
So your Uncle Barron is really your way older brother? Creepy.
I know. I’m sorry. I meant to tell you, but it never felt right. And when you think about it, I was brought here around the same time he had Gage, so I’ve been raised here. He pulls me closer and leans his head on my shoulder. I remember my time locked in that body, heavily disfigured. It was a prison, but here with you in this place, on Paragon, this is life.
So he saved you because your burns left you disabled. You lived that life for thirty-six years? I crawl over into his lap. I’m so glad he’s OK.
Liam and my Uncle Barron thought it’d be best to initiate the rescue before the burns incurred. That’s when they took me, but the rest of my life over there still left an impression.