I look up at Dahlberg. He’s so sweet looking still, but his eyes are wounded and half dead. When he couldn’t remember what had happened to him I thought that was good, keeping him safe and sane, but maybe the not knowing is haunting him anyway, killing him slowly with partial images and questions. I touch the tip of my juice bottle with my finger for reassurance and then lock eyes with him. “Are you really starting to remember?”
He closes his eyes after a second and swallows so hard that his Adam’s apple visibly moves up and down his throat. “I remember teeth, being trapped on a bed. I remember you bringing me down these ornate marble stairs through all these monsters. There was a wolf and a tiger out in the cold. I know it sounds crazy but I also know that you saved me from something, Zara. I am positive you did.”
Devyn leans forward on the couch. I nod at him. Nick clears his throat and I can tell just by looking at him that he’s okay with this. The decision is made. I wish Astley wasn’t late so he could know too.
“Maybe they can help,” I say to Nick, even as a knife seems to stab into my stomach. What is that? It’s all I can do not to crumple over. I soldier through it and say, “We can’t do it all by ourselves. Not even with Astley’s people. It’s just too big.”
“I know.” He motions for Paul and Cierra, Callie and Danielle, Dahlberg and Austin to pull up some chairs.
My stomach sort of flops around inside me. If we tell them, then their innocence is gone—just gone. Their entire perception of the world will be shattered. If we tell them, they could potentially tell other people, who could tell other people, and more and more regular human beings will know that the world isn’t anything like they thought—that there are secrets lurking right next to them, predators that look human but have needs, horrible needs.
“Oh my gosh …” Issie looks at me. “Is this kosher?”
I nod. Cassie swallows hard. She grabs Issie’s hand. “It’s the right thing to do. It’s better for them to know what they face.”
“But it could go viral.” Issie makes big eyes. “The whole world could know.”
“That’s the risk,” I say. “It’s a big risk.”
They quickly pull the chairs up to the table and once they are settled it is Devyn’s turn to clear his throat.
“Okay,” he begins, “we don’t know everything and it’s going to sound unbelievable but this is what’s happening. There are these things called pixies …”
They listen. They gasp. But I know as I watch them that they believe.
There’s a time when you’re super-little when you don’t really know yet that bad things exist. It’s before that first bully pushes you down on the nursery-school floor and says something like “I’m a lion and I’m going to eat you up.” It’s before that first-grade teacher puts you in timeout for talking, even though you weren’t talking and it was actually Stephen Sills. It’s before you see your best friend’s dad punch her mom. That’s when you realize people aren’t always good.
It is not a good realization. It is gaunt and tangled, a sucker punch to the stomach, the last breaths on Heartbreak Hill while running the Boston Marathon kind of realization, and it hurts and resonates all of your life and here we are—Nick, Devyn, Cassidy, Issie, and me—giving Jay and Paul and Austin, Cierra, Danielle, and Callie that same horrible sucker punch, watching them realize that the entire world is not what it seems, that there are secrets, dangerous secrets, out there lurking.
Sweat beads on Paul’s forehead, Austin’s face turns beet red, and poor Cierra is slowly rocking back and forth in her chair while Danielle pats her back. Callie looks like she wants to kill people. And Jay? His entire face is closed and hard.
Finally Devyn finishes our story, and we wait for their verbal reactions. Across the shop, some lawyer-type person orders a triple-shot espresso to go over at the counter.
“Well,” Callie says as she leans back in her chair and fiddles with an earring but keeps her gaze strong and steady on us. “Wow.”
Is blurts, “You’re going to accept it, just like that?”
I open my eyes again. Paul lifts up his hands and sort of shrugs like he’s already getting used to the idea. I wonder for a second what he’d think if Cassidy just told him he would die soon. Would he shrug then too?
Danielle speaks first. “All my life I’ve felt like there was something else going on. Something lurking. Something—oh, I don’t know—something that was here that I just didn’t know about. Now, I know.”
“That’s how I used to feel,” Cassidy agrees. “I even told you that one time at the bowling alley. Remember, Zare?”
I nod and give her a smile. It seems like forever ago, and it was probably less than a month.
“It makes sense,” Callie adds. “Seriously, this town is a freak zone of weird.”
“Jay?” I ask him.
He’s paler than normal. He looks up and meets my eyes. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me before.”
Jay repeats what he said while his feet twitch on the floor. The left foot. The right. It’s like they want to run away from the truths of his kidnapping, our deception.
“We thought you’d been through enough,” Issie starts, trying to explain as another pain stabs into my stomach. Where is Astley?
Jay’s hands are shaking he’s so upset, and I would be upset too. I rub my hand across my eyes. Every cell inside of me is tired and sad. And that’s when I realize that this is really it. We are making an army. I have to be willing to lead them, willing to let them risk their lives fighting this. If we ever want life to return back to normal we have to fight for it, all of us.
“I deserve to know what happened to me.” He shakes his head hard, brushing the hair out of his eyes.
“You do,” I agree. “I’m sorry.”
He nods sharply. “I want to know everything. All of it. We have to make plans. We can’t let what happened to me happen to other people.”
“No, we can’t,” I say, determination hitting me full scale. There is no turning back now. “Let me tell you about this thing Devyn and I have been writing. We call it the How to Survive a Pixie Attack manual. It’s everything we know so far about fighting pixies. We’ll make you all copies and then we’ll start training—”