The sorrow threatens again. It’s not just sorrow. It’s despair and desperation and a host of other horrible emotions that make my skin shiver. Nick’s thumb brushes against my cheek.
“I’ve changed too, Zara. I’ve changed,” he says, and repeats it like he’s only just realizing it himself. I can see the fear in those dark brown eyes of his.
“How?” I ask.
He shakes his head, unlocks his MINI, and throws the bag in. The shovel leaning up against the porch falls over into the snow. “We can’t pretend to be a couple anymore. We’ve just—we’ve changed too much.”
“Nick?” His name is a plea that won’t stop. “You’re just leaving? You’re leaving me alone?”
“I have to get out of the house for a while, just a couple hours, maybe the night.” He actually snickers as he folds his long body into the small car. “You aren’t alone.”
“Yes, I am. Without you, I’m alone.”
He pushes the key fob into the ignition hole. “That is the weakest, least Zara White thing I think you’ve ever said.”
And then he shuts the door.
And then he backs around.
And then he drives away from the house, through the trees, and onto the main road.
And then he is gone.
Again.
I growl, an inhuman, angry growl. The snow muffles it. I give up, grab the shovel, and stake it into a snowbank. Just like me, it will have to wait there until someone wants it again.
WEEKLY REPORT: 12/14 TO 12/21
TROOP/UNIT: Troop J
ITEMS OF INTEREST TO LOCAL AGENCIES:
12/15: Trooper David Seacreast responded to a report of suspicious activity off Surry Road. Juvenile complainant reported hearing his name whispered in woods outside his home. When Trooper Seacreast responded he found no tracks but did hear laughter in the woods. Possible radio transmitter in trees as part of a prank? Investigation continues.
I drop into bed, dead tired. The house smells different without anybody else here. It doesn’t have that same alive smell, that same good toughness of bad cooking, burned spaghetti, tiger fur. A couple months ago, my mom sent me up here to Maine to live. I grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, where the world is much warmer and full of flowers, but when my dad—technically my stepdad—died I became pretty depressed and my mom sent me to live with his mom, Grandma Betty, who is a paramedic/EMT. Really my mom sent me here because she was worried that my biological pixie king father might track me down and try to kidnap me or something. She had seen him in Charleston. She thought I’d be safer with Betty because Betty is a weretiger. Weird, I know, but in the last couple months I’ve gotten pretty used to weird.
Using my foot, I push my Amnesty International reports off my bed, along with a couple airmail envelopes that my mom bought me at the post office before she left. They plop on the floor in a messy unpile of papers. The selfish part of me wishes that my mom could just appear at my door wearing some flannel plaid pajama bottoms and a Flogging Molly T-shirt so we could talk. She can’t, and she goes to bed early, so I call Issie instead.
“Did you have a rough time of it tonight?” she asks.
“No pixies,” I say, “except me, of course. But great weirdness ensued.”
“What was up with the Loki thing?” she whispers. Her mom doesn’t like late-night phone calls.
I ignore the question about Loki and blurt, “Nick left.”
“What?”
“He left, Issie. He told me I had no soul and he left.” The words come out with a sob. I lose my phone a little bit. It slides down my shoulder.
“He did not!” She yells it and a second later she goes, “Crap. My mom heard. I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”
There’s a rustle of noise as she hangs up the phone. I stare at my cell screen: CALL ENDED. The screen goes dark, but I keep staring at it, willing it to ring. Three long minutes later she calls back.
Her voice is an exasperated hush as she says, “I’m back. I have to be super-quiet.”
I settle into the bed, stare at the ceiling, and quickly tell her about what happened, about how Nick said I wasn’t quote-unquote me anymore.
There’s an awkward pause before Issie says, “It’s just hard to get used to.”
“I’m still me. I’m not suddenly evil.”
“But you are different.”
I sit up and stare at my feet. “How? How am I different?”
“You’re tougher, more assertive,” she says.
“Those are bad things?”
“No …” She fumbles for words.
“How do you know that I’m not different because I’ve been through some serious crises? Because of Mrs. Nix dying or watching Nick die or even Gram taking off and going all MIA? How do you know it’s not just because of struggling to save people?”
“I don’t. I just know that you’ve changed and it’s for the better. It doesn’t matter what the reason is. I am almost jealous—not of the blue, sharp-toothed way you look when your glamour is gone—I think it would be nice to be better than I am, you know? Devyn says I’m having an identity crisis because I’m human. But wait! This is not about me. I’m so sorry. Oh, I totally suck as a friend. This is about you. Let me tell you: you, Zara White, are made of the sauce of awesomeness.” She was whispering but then her voice shifts into a louder, exasperated, Issie-lying voice. “No! You took my phone, Mom. Maybe I was sleep-talking.”
Click.
End of conversation. Poor Issie. Her mom totally controls her.
I nod my head back at the cell phone, trying to let it all register. “Okay.”
After I’ve shut off the light, for a second I pretend that it is all okay, that Nick’s words didn’t hurt me, that Grandma Betty will come back, that we’ll kick all the evil pixies’ butts, that the whole apocalypse-coming thing was a big lie, and that my insides won’t feel like oatmeal left on the counter all day.
It doesn’t work, and instead of being brave and stoic, my face starts to pucker up like all the sadness is sucking it in. I wonder if I even still have my glamour on, if I still look human, and then I realize I don’t care. It’s just me here in the dark, sobbing, and there’s nobody else to see me, nobody else to tell me I’m ugly or monstrous or soulless or anything. I am alone, terribly alone. That’s when I realize how much I don’t want to be alone, how sobbing should not be a solitary sport, how I wish my mom or Grandma Betty were here to hold me and rock me in her arms and lie to me that everything is going to be okay. That’s what people who love you do: they hold you and lie. They tell you that you’re worthy, that everything will be all right, and they do that even when you both know without a doubt that this is not true, that it is nowhere near truth.