truth in fiction

“So what’re you kids up to?” Julian asked, throwing himself at the other couch.  Until he’d said that, I’d forgotten how old he was.  He looked fresh out of high school.

            “We were just working on some chemistry homework,” Adrian said coolly.

            Julian slowly eyed the two of us, the corner of his mouth tilting up.  “Uh-huh.”

“Actually, I need to go finish, so why don’t you two go catch up while…I…do that.”

            I ran out of words, so I ran at the coffee table and pushed up, catapulting up to the middle of the bookshelf and using it to propel myself away from the two brothers as quickly as possible.  That much gorgeous was not good for a girl. 

            After a few seconds, I found our previous study station and let myself down onto the couch.  I contemplated taking the harness off, then decided against it.  I might need another fast escape.

            As I sat down on the couch, the clasps and knots bit into my legs painfully.  I sighed and stood, contemplating what to do.  Finally I jumped into the air, pushed the button to lower me just a bit, and hovered above the table horizontally.  It was surprisingly comfortable.

            After struggling through my homework for a few minutes, I slowly became aware that all the hairs on my arm were standing on-end and I had the strangest sensation of being watched.  I looked up from my textbook and saw a familiar pair of aviator goggles peeking just over the edge of the coffee table I was working at.  The boy that went with them was perfectly still.

            “Are you breathing, Lucian?” I asked, half afraid and half concerned.

            I heard a deep intake of breath from somewhere below the surface of the table.  “Now I am.”

            I peered at him curiously.  “Why weren’t you before?”

            He peered right back.  “I forgot.”

            “You forgot?” I asked incredulously.

            “Yeah.  I didn’t have to breathe so much back home.”

            I thought about this statement a moment, and decided to process it and go back to it later.  “Why are you hiding underneath the table?”

            The eyes blinked.  “Why are you on top of the table?”

            I smiled at him.  “Good question.  Why don’t you come out so I can see you and we can talk some more?  The couch is probably a lot more comfortable than the floor.”

            I swiveled the harness so my body faced the couch, but kept my gaze locked on his face.  The eyes blinked again, narrowed, looking at me, then opened and I saw Lucian slowly slither out from underneath the table and crawl, lizard-like, onto the couch, where he turned around and sat limply cross-legged and peered at me with his head tilted to one side, his wavy light brown hair sticking out in all directions.

            “Isn’t that more comfortable?” I asked with what I hoped was a friendly smile.

            He seemed to consider.  “Yes.”

            “Now what’s all this about not having to breathe?”

            He did a funny one-shoulder shrug.  “Didn’t need this so much back then.”

            I assumed “this” meant “body.”  I felt suddenly cold.  “Where was home for you before here?”

            He stared at me from behind his big goggles, his eyes too dark to see what color they were.  He replied without blinking, without breathing, without moving a single muscle besides his lips. 

            “Where my father lives.”

            His father was Adrian’s father.  Adrian’s father was a demon.  Adrian’s father lived in hell.  That meant Lucian had lived in hell.

            It seemed like a crazy question, but I had to ask it.  “Did you like it there?  At home?”

            He tilted his head slightly further to the side and held his hands up in front of his face as if they were alien objects.  “At home, I didn’t…I don’t remember...these…”  His expression turned frustrated.  “Everything gets in the way.”  He let his hands drop down at his sides again.

            “But, you can do lots of great things with those,” I said, wondering why I was trying to convince him that having a body and being human were great.  “I mean, you can pick up stuff and you can hug people and you can play.”

            He looked up with an expression that looked almost like happiness.  “I like to play.”

            I smiled encouragingly.  “You do?”

            The boy grinned.  “Adrian plays with me.”  And then he frowned.  “Nobody else does.”

            I was suddenly curious what my fake boyfriend’s younger brother, who seemed more inclined to his demonic side than his human side, thought of his older brother.

            “Do you like Adrian?” I asked.

            He nodded vigorously.  “Adrian doesn’t tell Mariana when I’m in his truck or when I do things people aren’t supposed to do, like hang upside down.  And he tells me stories when I go to sleep.  I like to sleep.  I like dreams.”  He paused and tilted his head again in consideration.  “I like to be awake, too.”  He smiled.  “I like blood.”

            We’d been doing good up until that last part.

            “Why is your heart fast again?” Lucian said in that half-dead monotone of his.

            “Because I’m happy to be talking with you,” I said, only sort of lying.

            “Your heart goes fast when you’re happy?”

            “Yeah,” I said.  “Sometimes.  Sometimes it goes fast because of other things.”  And before he could ask what other things, I asked a question of my own.  “Why do you wear those goggles all the time?”

            He blinked at me through the semi-tinted lenses before answering.  “The light hurts.”

            “Really?  Why?”

            “I never used them,” he said, tapping the glass slowly with his finger.

            “Oh.”

            And then out of the blue, he asked, “Are you Adrian’s girlfriend?” 

            I was a little shocked by the abrupt turn of topic and could only come up with, “Umm…yes?”

            “What’s a girlfriend?”

            My cheeks blushed.  I did not want to be the person to explain this to him.  “A girlfriend’s kinda like a wife, but not.  Mariana is married to Dominic, and I’m dating Adrian, which is sort of like being married to him, but not.”

            It was a really bad answer, mostly because it didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but Lucian simply nodded once.  Then, “Do you play with Adrian?”

            “Uhh…”

            Just then, I heard the tell-tale whisper of the magnets rolling across the ceiling and looked up to find Adrian clinging to a bookcase twenty feet above me.

            “Hey,” I said, grateful for his good timing.

            He hopped down to float gracefully next to me.  “Lucian,” he said to his brother, “why don’t you go ask Julian how his trip was?  He can tell you some really good stories about New York.” 

            Lucian scrambled over the back of the couch instantly and disappeared.  Adrian turned to me.  “Sorry about him.  He’s got the body of an eleven-year old and the social skills of a preschooler.”  Before I could comment, he said, “How’s the homework going?”

            I scrunched my face.  “It’s going.  Slowly, but it’s going.”  I turned to him.  “Did you and Julian catch up?”

            He looked…irritated.  “Yeah.  You could say that.”

            “Is everything okay?”

            He rubbed his hands over his face and peered down at the table.  I’d never seen him look tired before. 

            “Family dynamics are a little interesting when your siblings could be your parents or great-great-grandparents.  Sometimes it’s…difficult, for us to relate to each other.  Most of the time, siblings don’t live with each other.  Our concept of family is virtually non-existent.”

            I had the sudden and overwhelming urge to touch him.  To rub his shoulders, or give him a hug.  He wasn’t usually like this.  At the moment, he looked almost…human.

            “I’m sorry,” I said quietly.  It was all I could do.  All I was allowed to do.

            “You’re sorry,” he said with a short, sharp chuckle.  “Julian’s flirting with you, my father’s after you, and you have to deal with me on a daily basis, not to mention psycho-Lucian.  I should be the one apologizing.”

            I flipped up and then lowered myself so I was sitting on the table.

            “Adrian, don’t,” I said quietly.  He looked up at me.  “You’re the closest thing I have to a best friend.  Don’t make that sound like a burden.  It’s not.”

            He reached over and took my hand in his.  “I’m sorry.”

            “Don’t be.”

            He smiled in a painful sort of way, and sat up.  “Need some help with the rest of this?”

            I nodded, smiling.

***

            I muttered angrily. 

            “What was that?” Adrian asked. 

            “I said I hate money.”

            “You hate…money?” Adrian asked in a tone that sounded like he thought I was speaking Klingon.

            “Okay, I don’t hate money; I hate not having a job, and therefore not having money.”

            “Ah.  That makes more sense.”

            I was sitting at my desk, staring dully at my laptop while searching Craig’s List for jobs.  Adrian was laying stomach-down on my bed, checking my math homework.  The door to my room was open, of course.  I thought Uncle Joe was going to have a heart attack when he saw us head upstairs, so I’d very intentionally left my door as wide open as it would go.

            “What kind of job are you looking for?” Adrian asked, sitting up and peering over my shoulder at the screen.  I quelled the nervous tingle that went through my stomach.

            “I’m not really sure,” I said, chewing on my lip.  “I mean, my mom taught me how to sew and knit and crochet and embroider, and all that, and I’m pretty good, but what kind of jobs can you get with those kinds of skills?  It’s a dead art.  And even if it wasn’t, what am I going to find in Stony Creek?”

            Adrian set his chin on my shoulder and said “hmm” in a deep, rumbling sort of way.  It was a delicious sound.

            “What kind of stuff do you sew?” he asked finally.

            “All sorts of things.  I made that quilt on the bed.”

            “This?” he said, holding up the green quilt.  “Wasn’t this your Halloween costume?”

            “It was a quilt before it was a costume.  I also made the dress I wore that night.”

            He looked up.  “Really?”

            “Yep.  I’ve got a few other things I made here, but most of it’s packed away in my grandma’s basement.  I’ve got a whole book full of designs, and journals filled with sketches and ideas.”

            “Can I see them?”

            I kind of sighed and laughed at the same time.  “Sure.  Why not?”

            I reached over to my nightstand and opened the top drawer, pulling out all the books in there and setting them on the bed next to Adrian.  While he opened the top one, I turned back to the computer and glumly continued searching.

            “Case?” I heard him say a few minutes later.

            “Hmm?”

            “These are…. Can I borrow these?  Just for a little while.”

            I was preoccupied by my fruitless internet searches.  “Sure, I’m not doing anything with them.”  An ad for Christmas-themed greeting cards popped up and I turned to Adrian.  “Oh, and I forgot to tell you.  I’m going with some girls from school to Queensbury to shop for Christmas presents.”