Chaos (Kardia Chronicles) (Entangled Teen) Page 3

  Gram’s skin was like the translucent peel of an onion, and she was perpetually freezing no matter how hot it got, so turning up the heat was probably a good thing if she’d been outside earlier.

  I tossed my backpack in the corner, made my way to the kitchen, and tugged open the freezer door. Comfort food was exactly what I needed right now. It was like the woman was psychic or something. I yanked out the quart of yogurt. Not bothering with a bowl, I plucked a spoon from the silverware drawer and cracked that puppy open. More than half gone.

  Apparently it’d been a worse day than I’d thought. I vowed to hang in the kitchen with her later and make dinner together so we could talk.

  As I spooned up a frozen peach, I tried to think of something not weird, infuriating, or depressing that happened at school to entertain her with. I’d settled on making something up when she walked into the room.

  “What’s up with you?” she asked, her tired but shrewd eyes drilling into me.

  I swallowed and stalled by licking the spoon clean. I couldn’t say “nothing.” My mother’s bullshit meter was a well-oiled machine. And there went my best intentions…

  “Someone started another column at school. It’s sort of opposing my views.” Understatement of the year, but it was true and vague enough. I didn’t have to give her all the details, but it would explain my all-too-apparent bad mood. “It’s a guy,” I blurted. Jesus, it was like once my mouth started moving, there was no stopping it. I’d be a terrible spy. Need secrets? I got ’em right here! Waterboarding entirely optional. Might as well finish it, then. “This new guy at school.”

  She hitched a hip against the granite island and folded her arms over her chest, eyeing me perceptively. “Really? Now that’s interesting. So is it necessarily a bad thing for you, though? Maybe a little competition will get more people reading.”

  I started the column to keep me sane and grounded. To remind myself that the world still turned no matter what was happening with me, and that it was still full of good old regular folk problems.

  So complex but also so simple in a lot of ways. And it really helped.

  Even though people had gossiped about me like I was a Kardashian after the incident, I felt like I had more friends because of that silly little advice column. People who liked me and my scribbles, even if they didn’t know it was me they liked. It was kind of a poor man’s substitute for the feeling of belonging I’d been starving for, but at least it was something. The idea of sharing that or, worse, losing it because of Mac Finnegan made me a little hinky inside.

  I set down the carton and tossed the spoon in the sink, where it landed with a clatter. My mother followed it with her gaze and then shot me a disapproving look. I sighed and turned to the sink to get it. “I don’t know. Maybe not, but it sure feels like a bad thing.”

  I put the spoon in the dishwasher and turned back to face old Silver-Lining Lorelei. Her forced optimism when it came to my social life was often more annoying than helpful, and I was about to remind her of that but stopped short when I spied the deepening lines around her eyes. She had a bad day, and it’s not all about you. “You could be right, though; maybe it will be fine. Either way, not important. That’s all that’s going on with me. What’s up with Gram today?”

  Mom looked away and didn’t answer, which sent a cold finger of dread skating down my spine. We both had a habit of putting on a happy face for each other, but I’d asked her a direct question, and she was as silent as Bink during math class.

  “Mom?”

  Her face was drawn tight, the brackets around her mouth deep little slashes. “I think it’s time, Maggie.” Her voice cracked at the end, and I didn’t have to ask what she meant.

  I shook my head, refusing to accept what she was trying to tell me. Not now. Not yet.

  Anger came, hot and fast, and a pit formed in my stomach. “Who made you the decider?” Stupid question because Gram had a living will and she, in fact, had made Mom the person in charge of her care. But I was so far from rational then, none of that mattered. The wild energy inside me got all jiggly again, and I wished I was in my room so I could blow off some steam.

  “We’re a family, but it seems like it’s always you who gets to make all the decisions no matter who gets hurts.” I hated the bitterness in my tone, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. “So why today? What was so different than all the other days?”

  She looked like she was about to go off on me, but then seemed to cave in on herself, her back bowing as her face crumpled. “I was taking a shower, and she left. Just walked outside alone. I found her ten minutes later, two blocks away in just her nightdress, shaking like a leaf.” She reached a trembling hand out to me, but I stepped away and she let it fall to her side before sucking in a breath. I was a horrible daughter in that moment and I knew it, but I couldn’t keep playing this tiptoe game. “Her lips were blue, Mags. She’s going to hurt herself or…”

  The rest of that sentence hung in the air between us, unspoken. Or someone else.

  “I couldn’t take it if something happened.” Her voice had dropped to a whisper now.

  I couldn’t take it, she’d said. Lately it seemed like “I” was the only words she knew. What about Gram? What about me? Immediately, guilt stabbed at me, and I resented that, too. She was a great mother most of the time. Always went to PTA, baked for sales, and kept on me about all the crap I wish she didn’t. But then there was this part of her. The part that buried her head in the sand when things got too tough.

  I stared at the crystal vase filled with multicolored pebbles sitting on the island between us and wanted to hurl it across the room. There would be no talking to her in this state, but I had to try.

  “They won’t understand her,” I said dully, doing my best to bottle the emotions that battered around inside me like a hurricane looking for an escape route. “She’ll have one of her flip-outs and end up in some sort of mental ward strapped to a bed.” And the meanest part of me got meaner as my brain conjured an image of some giant orderly holding my grandmother down and me coming up behind him and draining the life from him until he was nothing but a blubbering sack of puke.

  “They have patients who have dementia just like her. They’ll give her medicine and they can help—”

  I kept on. “They don’t have anyone like her, and you don’t even know what medicines like that might do to her. They could kill her. You just want her out of your hair so you can bury your head like you always do. Well, guess what? Just because you hide it so you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

  I reached out and closed my hand over a fat green apple that sat in a bowl on the countertop. I released the emotional valve just a hair and the tiniest flicker of an image, more like a memory, flitted through my mind. A tree full of leaves and other apples. Then the apple exploded in my hand…

  “Enough!” Mom whispered furiously, her horrified eyes locked on a pulpy chunk of fruit that stuck to the front of my shirt like it was a severed head. “I told you, the more you hold it in now, the easier it will be to bind you later. Those displays won’t be tolerated. Go upstairs and don’t come out until you’ve cooled off. And believe me, this mess you’ve made will be waiting for you when you come back.”

  I pulled a Marcia Brady and stomped off toward my room, ignoring the hurt on my mother’s face as I passed her. Deep down, I knew this thing with Gram was breaking her heart as much as it was mine. More, maybe. But at that point in time, it all felt like another betrayal. She wouldn’t help me. She wouldn’t help Gram. All she cared about was herself and her “fragile state.” I was sick to fucking death of it.

  More stomping, then I slammed my bedroom door behind me. I flopped onto my bed face-first and screamed into the pillow. That poor pillow. It had taken a lot of crap from me in the past six months. My brain whizzed back like a reel on a fishing pole and snagged the memory it seemed to gravitate toward every time I had a still moment. The night everything changed.

  It had been bl
acker than Echo Lake in the middle of a moonless night last spring. I’d gone to sleep stressed about a test in the morning and the next thing I knew, I woke up levitating in my bed. I started screaming and hadn’t stopped until my mother busted into the room and managed to drag me back to the mattress again.

  “What’s happening to me?” I asked her, shaking and terrified.

  My mother’s frantic eyes searched my face. “It’s not supposed to be now.”

  “What’s not supposed to be now?” I screamed.

  My voice was raw from it by that point. It took her about ten minutes to calm me down enough to even hear her, but I learned a few things that night. One: houses in New Hampshire are far enough apart that no amount of screaming is going to help you if you’re getting murdered by a serial killer. Two: I can scream for a realllly long time. And three…

  I’m a semi-god. A distant descendant of the goddess of love, Aphrodite.

  Finding out had been a total mindscrew. I grew up like a regular kid, playing house with my teddy bears and Bink. I wanted a pony, although I’d put in a request with Santa for one that flew because if not, why bother? I loved to eat junk food—still do. And my mom was my hero. But that all changed six months ago, including the last part.

  I love her the same, but I’ll never trust her again. Not like before.

  Sounds harsh, but when a girl finds out the past sixteen years have been a lie, it’s tough to be nice. And when her mom won’t even try to help her through the craziest time in her life? It’s even tougher.

  I tried to talk to her about it. To press for more details because what she told me could fit onto a single sheet of paper. Letter sized. Double-spaced. Comic Sans, size eighteen.

  We’re…different.

  That was how she’d started the convo. It was kind of hilarious. I mean, that sounds like the beginning of a “why you have two daddies” talk.

  I couldn’t recall it word for word, but it went something like, You’re a semi-god, same as your gram and me. We’re distant descendants of gods and their human mates. The change starts on your seventeenth birthday, but apparently you’re an early bloomer. I didn’t want to be a semi anymore, so I took my ball and went home—apparently that’s allowed?—and that’s what I want you to do, too. So let’s all ignore the fact that your body is being ripped apart by some strange, awful need, and once your change is complete, I’ll teach you how to make it go away. Sort of. How long will it take? Five years. Ten on the outside. If you don’t, it only gets stronger and will never go dormant. Insert brittle smile here. Strudel?

  Strudel.

  My mother’s answer to all of life’s problems. Every bad thing that ever happened to me was followed by strudel. My father’s death? Strudel. When we had to move out of our old house to a cheaper one down the street because we couldn’t afford it anymore? Strudel. I wanted to rabbit-punch strudel in the testicles but hug it at the same time because it was Mom’s way of trying to make me feel better when she didn’t know how. And she definitely didn’t know how after the whole floaty-bed exorcist thing.

  Her explanation had been shit, but even still, a part of me was relieved. I mean, the list of things it could have been was pretty short and all of the options were bad except one. Either I hadn’t floated at all and was having some sort of mental flip-out, I was possessed by Satan—I gotta say, this was the worst of all the choices in my book—or I’d been bitten by a radioactive something or other and was now a superhero. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t wicked stoked about that last one. But when she told me the truth—or the little sliver of it she’d been willing to share—I think I blacked out some.

  From the outside looking in, maybe it seems like a blessing. A semi-god. Seems cool in theory, but it’s actually not that cool. The things I can do aren’t things any good person would want to do. I can’t fly. I can’t heal—myself or anyone else. I can’t turn peas into chocolate. Even the thing with the buckling metal on my locker and the whole levitating on the bed show were flukes…just random outlets for the overabundance of energy building inside me mixed with anger. I couldn’t really do any of it on command. So far, the only interesting thing I seem to be able to do is extract sometimes vague information from living things through touch.

  Oh yeah, and hurt, maim, and kill with that same touch.

  Not exactly tricks that win you friends or anything. The worst part was that I didn’t know how to control it in any reliable way. I kind of had to push down with my insides to squash it, but it was exhausting. Like holding my breath underwater, only forever.

  Then there’s the need. Because, as the screwed-up descendant of the goddess of love, taking from people—sucking the love from them into me—gives me a feeling of fullness. Like if I was starving and someone gave me a bowl of beef stew with a hunk of crusty bread to dunk in it. It made me warm all over. Filled up. Satisfied.

  Only one person outside my family knew what was going on, and that was Libby. I sometimes wondered why she didn’t hate me for it. I sometimes hated me for it.

  I sat up, snatched my laptop from the nightstand, and plopped it onto my lap. One other great thing about the column… It was a distraction when my own shit got too real. I grabbed my headphones and slapped them over my ears, cranking my iPhone to head splitting.

  Don’t think. Don’t think.

  I closed my eyes and focused on the thumping bass, forcing myself to push the thoughts of my grandmother and Mom and Mac and semis out of my head and let the riot inside me calm.

  It took a while before I could even unclench my fists, but when I did, I logged onto the e-mail I used for my column. The first message in a list of twelve had a sad face in the subject line, and I clicked it. I sure as hell wasn’t making any headway on my own problems. Maybe I could help someone else.

  Dear She:

  My mom won’t respect my privacy, and I’m losing my mind! It’s like I can’t even have a thought without her in my face about it. Sometimes, she’ll just hold out her hand and I’m supposed to give her my phone so she can read all my texts. Then, the other day, I found her reading my journal. My JOURNAL! Shouldn’t that be sacred? It’s so unfair. Why buy me a journal with a little lock on it if you’re just going to find the key and read it anyways? I’ve asked her that, and she just says it’s for “my safety” and if I wasn’t so secretive and talked to her more, we wouldn’t be having this problem. Bottom line? As long as I’m in her house, I have to obey her rules. My stepmom is a total bitch so I can’t move in with my dad, and I don’t have a job so I can’t go anywhere else. Short of living on the streets, I don’t know what to do anymore. HELP!

  Signed,

  Wits End

  I mulled over the question and began to type.

  Dear Wits End:

  I feel your pain. It’s tough when someone won’t respect your boundaries and feels like they have the right to get all up in your business, even when it is your mom. If I were you, I’d have it out with her. Put your foot down and explain how bad what she’s doing makes you feel. Maybe she’ll get a clue that she’s the one causing the friction between the two of you and if she got out of your hair, you’d be more willing to talk to her and spend more time together.

  Forever Yours,

  She

  I hit send almost defiantly. Mac Finnegan wasn’t going to stop me from doing something I enjoyed. Not to mention, it was good advice. Feeling righteous and a little better all around, I shut down my e-mail and surfed the net for a while, Googling the answers to life’s most pressing questions like: Do turtles have vaginas? And What’s a Hessian? I must have fallen into some weird, data-induced trance, because it seemed like only a few minutes had passed when a knock at the door came, but it was already getting dark out.

  Mom stood in the doorway for a long moment. The shadows under her eyes were even deeper than they had been before, and I swallowed back the guilt.

  “Bink’s here.” She turned to go.

  “Thanks, Mom,” I called after her softly.
I sat up and smoothed my hand over my hair.

  “You look like shit,” Bink observed as he stepped into the room.

  “Gee, thanks. You’re looking great yourself.”

  He grinned and shuffled over to my desk and folded his giant frame into the rolly chair.

  “You sure you’re up to helping me?”

  “Seriously? I look that bad?” I set my computer on the comforter and pushed myself off the bed to step in front of the full-length mirror. My hair stood out at all angles like a black fright-wig, and my now-wrinkled shirt sported a giant peach fro-yo stain front and center. Bleary, haunted green eyes stared back at me, and I blinked. “Point taken. I’m going to go wash my face. You pull out your notes from class, and we’ll get cracking.”

  I headed down the hallway toward the bathroom when I heard Bink’s mournful reply. “Notes? I’m supposed to have notes?”

  I should’ve been annoyed, and I snorted at him disapprovingly, but inside I was relieved. This was going to take focused attention and hours of work. Exactly the additional distraction I needed after a day like today.

  By eight o’clock, we’d slogged through the long and stunningly boring book and had gotten the first four pages of Bink’s paper on it. I was feeling a little better in general and had decided to not be an alarmist about Gram. Mom had just lived through a hellish day. After a good night’s sleep, everything would look different to her. We’d talk tomorrow and come up with some solutions. Maybe I could even homeschool so I could help more during the day. We’d get through this.

  As for Mac, right now, even if he did send his column to other people, they wouldn’t know that She was me. Yeah, he was still being a dickbag for dissing my advice, but at least I was the only one who knew it was my advice he was dissing. Yet, at any rate.

  A soft knock sounded at the door.

  “Come in,” Bink called, looking up from the keyboard where he was two-finger typing out his bibliography.