Hail - Chapter One (UPDATED)

         Typically my neighbor’s dogs snarl like I mean to hop over the fence and barbecue them. Their eyes train on the low hanging bushes not even four feet from where I stand. They can’t see the pale mound glistening in dawn’s chill, but they can smell it.

         Hung-over college kid? Our house is too far from the college campus for that. A drifter? But who’d take the trouble of finding this town to wander through? As I reach him, all these questions fall away like ash. Before me lies the next thing to a corpse.

         Dried blood crusts over several purple bruises. A few strands of matted black hair cling to what might be, beneath all the destruction, a handsome face. Or, might have been a handsome face. Did he crawl here to bleed out in my backyard, I wonder, or did someone dump him for dead?

         With a slick whisper against the dewy grass, the gate creaks open. Perhaps my neighbors found the body first and already called the police. But this man striding across the lawn doesn’t look like a policeman to me. Dressed in a sharp, ash-colored suit, his slung-low fedora conceals all his features.

         My lungs swell, ready to scream.

         “Olivija,” his voice rasps through the breaking darkness.

         I know that voice. But it isn’t until the wind picks up and I smell him that I recognize who he is. Raw cedar swirls with heavy sandalwood. I have not seen this man in over 10 years. When last I saw him, I stood a sniveling seven year-0ld watching his coffin get lowered into the ground.

         With a thud, I hear my cell phone hit the sodden grass. The man in the suit sweeps passed me, whips off his glove and feels for the dead man’s pulse. A gnarled and weathered finger lingers over a tattoo on the man’s wrist—two intersecting infinity loops—one open and the other closed.

         “Good,” he straightens. “I can’t have this kid dying on my grounds.”

         Clamping a hand onto my shoulder, he says, “Take this man into the house, Li.”

         If I were the fainting-type, I would have swooned on the spot. If I were the sort to fly into a tizzy, I might have demanded to know how we managed to bury him alive. Or where he’s been these past ten years. But, I just stand there, legs fused to the soil.

         Eyes still obscured by the shadows of his hat, the man cups my cheek in a callused palm. “Don't tell your mother. Not about any of this. Not yet.” He turns to cross the yard and disappear the way he came. “At another time—a quieter time—I’ll explain. I’ll call you with further instructions. Keep this quiet, my little Olive, while I handle the situation.”

         The phantom is gone. Were it not for the warm tingle against my cheek and the lingering pressure on my shoulder, I would’ve thought I’d hallucinated the whole thing. For someone who’s just risen from the dead, my grandfather seems so business as usual. Maybe this is business as usual. And if it is, then I figure I’d better do as he says.

         The young man’s body bakes the grass where he lies. For the moment he’s still living, but he won’t be for long without medical attention. Opening my mouth could just mean dragging my family into this situation. Or never finding out what this situation is. Keeping it closed could mean I’ll really have a corpse on my hands.

         I haul the stranger into the house.

         As I wrangle with my bedroom door, he sinks like a cut of meat from the butcher’s hand. Somewhere above me, my mother demands, “What’s going on?”

         Biting my lip, I wait for the creak of her footsteps on the blue wooden steps that lead to the third floor. The creak never comes. As my sisters argue over the bathroom mirror down the hall, I gather the boldness to push open my door and drag the man to the bed.

         The buzz in my pocket, I realize, isn’t a sudden muscle spasm, but my phone vibrating. “Hello?” I say, maybe too loudly. “Hello,” again. This time a whisper.

         “Where is he now?” asks my grandfather. Ambient noise in the background says he’s driving and fast.

         “In my room,” I reply. “With me.”

         “Your mother and sisters?”

         I nudge a stack of books out of my way and pull the velvet gray curtains closed over the sheer white ones. “Getting ready to leave. Where are you?”

         “Get to school. Quickly.”

         I blink into the open space. “What?”

         “Your mother will get suspicious if she see’s your car. I can’t have any more people involved in this.”

         “And I just leave this guy here?”

         “Yes. Lock your door, but I doubt he’ll be on his feet anytime soon.”

         “I don’t think he’ll be back on his feet at all if he doesn’t get help now. Mom can help him…”

         “No. You’re mother cannot know that I’m alive I will call you later with further instructions.” His voice fades, but I hear him say. “Get me a runner.”

         “Should I tell them it’s the Alchemist?” Someone else is with him.

         “No. Just a chemist…” Click. Silence.

         The Alchemist? I wonder if we’ve suddenly slipped back into the middle ages.

         Upstairs, Mom yells for the girls to hurry it up. Eight o’clock. Now I am late for school. Perfect. I take one last sweep of the room. Barely, the man’s chest creaks like warping wood to let in shallow breaths of air. I close my door, slink back down the stairs and slip into my car—an old, black Toyota Celica from the turn of the century.

         As I roll down the street, I catch a glimpse of Mom, Toni and Ami tripping out onto the driveway. Mom yammers away on her cell. She’s wearing her scrubs. I guess she’s headed to the OR. Ami’s waving her spindly arms in the air somewhat like a spastic squirrel on crack. Toni’s stock-still like a stoic metal pole in the wind. Clearly, they’re arguing over who should get shotgun. Toni wins. A left turn onto Murray Street and they’re gone from view. 

         Like anybody else, my family’s never been normal. But, we have a particular sort of malfunction. The men in my family have a penchant for disappearing. Well, in most cases, dying.

         My brother, Claybourne? I haven’t seen him since he graduated from college five years ago. Every now and then he calls to let us know he’s located somewhere in the land of living. My father? Dead. Died the week my Mom found out she was preggers with Ami. Nobody’s ever been clear with me on what killed him. They wouldn’t let any of us see the body either. Now that I’m older, I figure it must’ve been something pretty gruesome. My grandfather “died” less than a year later. 
The best way to deal with death is to expect it. Vanishing bodies I’m used to. A sudden resurrection? Now that’s got me startled.

         Still, maybe I should be a little more shell-shocked than I am. After all, I’m hiding a severely injured man in my bedroom. If he’s dead by the time I get back, that’ll be some serious irony for you.

         I shoot Robbie a text to let me in the back.

         By the time I get to the art room doors, Robbie’s leaning in the doorway with his thumbs tucked into black suspenders.

         “Uh oh,” he whistles while cleaning the lenses on his thick, plastic framed glasses. It’s all for fashion. I swear he has 20-20 vision. Unlike me. Without my contacts, I’m blind as all get out. Robbie balances his frames back on his nose, side-stepping to let me squeeze through.

         “What?” Shrugging out of my black military jacket behind the rainbow row of paper rolls, I retrieve my sketchpad and prepare to pretend like I’ve been here a while. Ms. Pratt used to be pretty chill, but ever since she got knocked up at the beginning of the school year, she’s turned into a complete witch.

         “You’ve got that look on your face. The one that says, ‘someone please mess with me so I can pull out my fancy capoeira moves and kick your little hinny.’ That one. What happened?”

         “Nothing.” I plunk down next to Abbey at our new usual table as far from Ms. Pratt’s desk as possible. Abbey twists a tiny finger through her spiky blue hair and gives me this quizzical eyebrow raise over the top of her laptop. Opposite me, Kate’s too busy perfecting the fine details on the nude statue she’s working on to notice I’ve arrived.

         “Gah!” Kate purses raspberry lips and rakes red nails through her silken, caramel hair. “I just can’t get them to hang right!”

         “Look, darling, even Michelangelo couldn’t get them to hang right,” Robbie tosses over his shoulder as he inspects his mannequin enveloped in yards and yards of blue silk and tulle netting. It’s sliced and slashed, but I’m pretty sure it’s my homecoming dress from freshman year.

         “Robbie! That’s mine,” I snap. Robbie’s a bloody klepto when it comes to other people’s clothes.

         “That dress was an atrocity. But you’re not to blame. We weren’t friends yet.”

         Actually, that’s exactly how we became friends, when Robin walked up to me at freshman homecoming and said, “You’re gorgeous, darling, but that gown is hideous.” Which it was. Layers of silk, tulle from here to China, I’m pretty sure I looked like an oversized blueberry fronting as a frosted fairy. To be fair, I didn't pick it. Forcing me to go to homecoming was my grandmother’s idea. We’d just moved to Macen. Mom took up the cause, so I’d “quit sulking, get out of the house and make some friends.” I guess it worked.

         “It’s in your size,” Robin dismisses with a flick of his wrist.

         “What is it? A toga? A heap of cloth is not a size.”

         Robbie takes an unhurried, stroll around his mannequin, tugging at a little tuft of tulle here, flicking a cut of silk there. “Vision, darling, vision. Besides, you can’t hold back creative genius. You’ll thank me later.”

         “So what’s going on?” asks Abbey, swinging the chain attached to her spiked collar. “You seem kinda stressed this morning.”

         “Nothing,” replies Robbie before I can say anything. “Which means something, but she isn’t going to tell us until it explodes out of her,” he glances at his watch, “approximately three months from now. At which point, we’ll all duck and take cover.” Robbie doesn’t see me roll my eyes at the back of his delicately gelled, dirty blonde head because he’s fussing with the remnants of my dress. “So, moving along. We’re seeing Reliance The Spirit tonight, right?”

         “Duh,” Kate reties her multi-colored, knit headband while checking out her reflection in the mirror across the room. This year, she’s into this boho-chic, hippie thing. There’s a different knitted headband for everyday of the week. “We’ve been waiting to see them all year.”

         “I don’t know,” I mutter, scratching away at my sketchpad.

         “What do you mean? You’ve been dying to see them too. You can’t not come,” Kate insists.

         Reliance The Spirit is only the most killer band this decade. Maybe even this century. I’m practically betrothed to the lead guitarist, Sakamoto. He doesn’t know it yet, but that’s a minute detail.

         “You don’t need to study,” says Robbie matter-of-factly. “Your grades are disgustingly perfect.”

         “It’s not that. It’s just that…” I shake my head, but I just can’t tell them. “I have stuff I have to take care of.”

         “What? The clinic?” Abbey roles her almond-shaped, hazel eyes. “Jeez. It’s Friday. Tell your mom you’ll work tomorrow. You can’t miss this.”

         Actually, the mountain of work that’s probably waiting for me right now at my mother’s clinic totally escaped my mind. “No. Not that,” I scowl.

         “Then what?”

         “Look. Just stuff. If I can come, I’ll meet you guys there at 9.”

         “What is that?” Abbey motions at my sketchpad. “It’d make a nice tattoo.”

         “Stop that thought!” Robbie wags his index finger millimeters from Abbey’s face. “Abbey, you don’t have any tattoos. And your father would kill you if you did.”

         It’s funny that she should mention the tattoo though. I hadn’t even realized it, but there on the page, etched in crude ink, the two intersecting infinity loops of the man’s tattoo stare back at me.


         Senior Studio, AP Spanish, BC Calc, AP Bio, lunch, Human Anatomy & Physiology, AP English, AP Chem. It’s the last period of the day. And it’s such a yawn, as usual. My grandparents had a special sweet spot for science. Chemistry especially. Half the time, my bedtime stories were a rousing chapter on organic compounds. My grandfather had me memorize the whole periodic table of the elements by the age of five. That was before he died. Correction. Quite clearly, that was before he faked his death.

         While Mr. Hensen drones on about thermodynamics, I check my phone for the hundredth time that day. No calls. No texts. Nothing.
To the front and the left, Kyle balls up a page of doodles and pelts it at the back of Lara’s head. Lara glares back. Her boyfriend Dylan smacks Kyle upside the head. Cynthia raises her hand to ask her thousandth, asinine question of the day. She makes sure to pull her tank top a little lower first, so her cleavage pops like a butt crack. “Mr. Hensen, wait,” she starts, swinging her fake red hair to her batting eyelashes. Mr. Hensen is a total geezer. I’m pretty sure Cynthia’s got an A in this class. And she’s never turned in a single complete homework assignment.

         I roll my eyes and count the seconds left until the bell rings. And when it finally does, I weave my way to the front of the class and prepare to plow down the hall.

         Behind me, someone pokes me softly between the shoulder blades. For a moment, I consider pretending like I don’t notice. Then I figure a couple minutes won’t make that much of a difference.

         I turn to meet Dmitry’s polar gaze. Every time he blinks, I half expect little ice crystals to fall from those long, blonde lashes.

         “Hey, Li,” he says, whisking fluffy, platinum hair out of his icy blue eyes. Even though he’s hunched over, he’s still taller than me by about half a foot. And I’m about 5’ 8”. Dmitry’s never said more than a few words to me, and that’s more than he’s ever said to anyone else at Macen High, I think.

         “Yeah, Dmitry?” I tell myself to smile and be patient.

         A sheepish smile cracks across his thin, pink lips as he plunges his hands into his pockets. “Um, I was kind of wondering, if...what are you doing this weekend? Because, um, if you’re free, I was thinking, maybe we could, you know, hang out. Or something.”

         “I’m not sure, exactly.” Behind Dmitry, I can see Robbie has popped up at his locker two down from mine, and Kate’s with him. Robbie’s shaking his hands like he’s trying to ward off some evil. “I…um…well, I might be going to that concert tonight. The one at Vacancy next to Son of Tom’s on the square.”

         “Reliance The Spirit?”

         “Yeah. Um, Robbie, Abbey, Kate and I are planning to go, so you’re more than welcome to meet us there too.” Behind him, Robbie, who has already thrown his hands in the air in exasperation, impatiently taps his foot.

         “What time?” asks Dmitry.

         “9,” I say pulling myself down the hallway. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you later,” I wave.

         “Later, Li,” he smiles after me, watching me go.

         I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I have just seen Dmitry the Droid smile—and at me—when Robbie sidles up to me. “Li, darling?” he pauses to pop an Australian tea tree flavored toothpick into his mouth. It’s part of his latest attempt to quit smoking. “Please tell me you did not just invite señior awkward to join us this evening. Hmm. Please.”

         I kick my locker door shut. “He needs friends, Robbie.”

         “Hmm. I think you should date him,” Kate muses, twisting a finger through her hair. “You’re the only person he bothers to give the time of day, so…”

         “I think they should not,” says Robbie.

         “He’s got a little something-something. Kinda Clark Kent-y, but with the wrong glasses.”

         “If by like Clark Kent you mean hiding something, then yes, he’s kind of like Clark Kent,” says Robbie.

          “Who’s like Clark Kent?” Abbey asks as she slides up beside us.

         “Dmitry. Don’t you think?” says Kate. “I think Li should date him.”

         “Not a chance,” I shake my head. We begin to pick our way through the minefield of PDA. What is it about Fridays, and the sudden need to chew off people’s faces in the middle of the hallway? “No time for boys.”

         “You cannot invite him and then bail. You’d better be there tonight.”

         “I’ll try.”

         “Uh-uh. Be there.”

         “Fine. I’ll be there.”