Touch (14 page)

“If you were Mark.”

He nodded. “It’s different, for your dad. I think, right now, I want what he wants—I
want my mom to be happy. I
know
that she loved me. I know that she misses me. I know that if her death could bring
me back, she’d kill herself in a heartbeat. But it won’t—and if it could, and she
did, I would hate being alive.

“But I can think this and feel this because, right now, it’s so clear that I was the
center of her universe.”

“You were the center of mine.”

He actually winced. “I was only one of the foundations. You had Allison, you had Michael,
and they both needed you at least as much as I thought I did. My mother—”

“Lived for you.”

“Lived for me. I’ve gutted her life, and I hate it. But—”

“If she hadn’t cared at all, you’d have hated that as well?”

“People are contrary. Yeah, I’d’ve hated it—if no one missed me at all, what would
the point of my life have been?” A pained, quiet smile rippled across the stillness
of his expression. “I don’t want her to suffer,” he said.

“But love causes suffering?”

He laughed. “Only when it ends.”

“It never ends, Nathan. You’re dead, but I still love you.”

“You can talk to me.”

“How do you think I know what your mother does? How do you think I know what she does
for your grave? I was
there
. Not at the same time as your mother—but after. I saw the flowers she left, and the
notes, and the Game Boy. Maybe she thought it would reach you somehow. She still loves
you, Nathan—we both do. The fact that you died doesn’t change that. It only changes—”
she stopped. “She’s never going to stop. I’m never going to stop.”

“I don’t want her to stop. I want her to move on.”

“That’s not your decision to make.” She turned away.

“Emma.”

“Yes?” She began to straighten her duvet, which was hard because Petal was flopped
out in the middle of it and didn’t want to move.

“Could you—could you let her—”

“Talk to you?”

“Yes.”

“I could. If you want, I will.” But she hesitated, and he caught it—he’d always noticed
everything.

“You don’t want to do it.”

“I
do
want to do it,” was her low, low reply. She bent a moment over the bed as the world
became blurry. “I want to do it for her because it’s what
I
would want. I’d want that last chance to say good-bye. I’d want to tell you all the
things I didn’t tell you because I didn’t
know
it would be the last day. I’d
want it
, Nathan, because it would be peace.”

“You don’t think it would be peace for my mother.”

“I do—but . . .” She looked down at her hands; they were shaking. “But if I knew that
you could be called when I needed to—wanted to—see you, I don’t think I’d ever let
go. If she knows it’s because of me, she’ll be here. Maybe not the day after, but
the week after, and every week after. She’ll ask questions I can’t answer—and she’ll
ask questions I
can
answer, but they’ll put her life in danger.

“And I’ll hate it—but I’ll do it because I’ll understand what she needs. I’m—I’m lucky.
I
can
talk to you. I
can
touch you.”

“Not without cost.”

She laughed. It sounded like crying. “I don’t want to deny her anything because what
she feels—it’s the closest to what I feel. My friends worry for me; Michael misses
you. But they don’t feel the loss the same way because they didn’t—”

“Love me.”

“Not like I did.”

His smile was hesitant. If you didn’t know him, it would have looked shy. Emma knew
him. “Am I wrong?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“But?”

He laughed. “But you were so angry at Allison for saying almost the same thing about
your
mom.”

“I wasn’t. She didn’t say the same thing—”

“You were, Emma. It just didn’t sound the same to you because you were talking about
your mother, not mine. You don’t want to give my mother hope when you can’t guarantee
you can carry it—but you want it for yours, anyway.”

“It’s not the same,” she finally said, voice heavier. “Your mom wants to see you.
I’m certain it’s the only things she wants. My mom—”

He lifted a hand and touched her lips with his cold, cold fingers. “Don’t. Don’t say
it.”

“Why not? It’s true.”

“Not everything true deserves to be said.”

“I’ll do it, though. If you think it’ll help her.”

“It’s not just what I think that counts here.”

* * *

An argument was hovering in the air between them, growing denser and thicker as the
silence stretched. Emma wanted to avoid it, but it loomed so large it was almost impossible
to speak around it. It would have helped if she’d understood why; the last thing she
wanted—the last thing she’d’ve said she wanted—was to fight with Nathan.

It was with some relief that she saw her father flow through the closed door and come
to rest with his back against it. Her father looked aged and tired, even if the dead
didn’t change.

“Dad? Where’s Mark?”

“He’s outside.”

“Outside the house?”

“Yes.” The way he answered made it clear that it wasn’t outside
this
one.

“What happened?”

Nathan had fallen silent, but he remained in the room; his hands were in his pockets,
in fists.

“We went to his house,” Brendan Hall replied. He left the door and walked toward the
curtained windows, staring in the direction of the veiled sky. Back turned to Emma,
he said, “If at all possible, Em, I think you should avoid this.”

“How?”

“It’s not—it’s not like the last time. I don’t think there’s anything you can do at
that house that will help Mark.”

“Dad—” She knew it was bad; he kept his back toward her as she approached. She had
to touch him before he would turn, and his elbow—the closest thing to her hand—was
cold. To her surprise, he reached out and hugged her tightly; if his elbow had been
cold, his hug wasn’t. “I’m not telling you not to care,” he told her. “I don’t think
you’ll get rid of Mark any time soon; he’s just come in from the—the cold; he needs
company.

“But that part of his life is over. Maybe he can come back to it later—but not now.”

“Then why is he there, Dad? Why didn’t he come home with you?”

Her father’s grip tightened for a moment; it was his only answer.

* * *

In the dark, Petal snoring on the foot of the bed—where foot, in this case, meant
the entire lower half—Emma could hear the dead. She could hear them the way haunted
people in movies did: they wailed, they cried, their words were stretched and attenuated.
There was a hunger in their voices that distorted them so much they were barely recognizable
as human. Emma knew; she tried.

One glance at the clock told her it was 2:30 in the morning, East Coast time. Sitting
up, Emma slid her foot out from under Petal and swiveled on the bed. She had two tests
tomorrow—tonight was
not
the night to listen to the wailing dead if she wanted better than a bare pass in
either.

Explaining this to the distant voices, on the other hand, was a lost cause; all it
did was wake up her dog, who assumed she wanted to take him for a walk. Loudly.

“Petal,” she said, catching his face in her hands, which was always dangerous unless
you
wanted
a whiff of dog breath, “we’re
not
going for a walk, and if you wake Mom up, she’ll bite
my
head off.”

He not only breathed in her face, but licked her chin as well. She hugged him tightly,
and only in part to avoid his tongue. The dead didn’t bother him, he hadn’t brought
home a stray boyfriend, and he wasn’t giving her advice she couldn’t bear to follow.

The temperature in the room took a sudden dive; she tightened her grip around the
rottweiler’s neck before letting him go. He, on the other hand, had both large paws
in her lap; he was whining. The room was dark enough that the sudden blink of the
computer monitor made her shut her eyes. When she opened them again—slowly—she saw
Mark’s back. He was standing in front of the monitor, his hands by his sides. There
were no key clicks, no mouse clicks, but the images on the screen were changing as
she watched.

She remembered her dad reading a letter she’d written and posted; she couldn’t remember
whether or not he’d gone through the motions of touching the keys in order to make
her more comfortable. It was something her dad would do—but Mark was not a child who
would understand the need for that kind of make-believe. Neither, she thought, as
she approached him, would Michael.

The light of the computer screen turned most of the nearby room a pale shade of gray
and blue; it didn’t touch Mark. The dead seemed to radiate their own light; regular
light didn’t change their appearance at all.

“Mark?”

His profile, silent and almost graven, didn’t change. She wondered if he’d heard her.
She almost reached out to touch him, but remembered that he didn’t like to be touched.
With Michael, it was the only certain way to get his attention when his focus was
buried inside his own head. Mark wasn’t Michael—but he reminded Emma of Michael in
his childhood. Michael, however, was alive.

“Mark, shut it off. Come away. There’s nothing there you haven’t seen.”

He didn’t move at all.

She came to stand behind him, her palms hovering over his shoulders. His search terms—he
was Googling—made her flinch. Mother. Kills. Child. Before she could find words, “Murders”
was substituted for “Kills.” On her best and brightest day, headlines like this were
a horror she didn’t visit.

She wished that Allison were here. Or Michael. Or her father. Anyone but her. At this
time of night the only person who might wander by was her dad, and only because he
no longer had to work in the morning. Brendan Hall remained conspicuously absent;
Emma was alone with her slobbering dog and a boy who stood like a statue and read,
and read, and read.

A
T 8:10, Emma managed to be in the front hall, decently dressed but distinctly underfed.
She hadn’t made her mother’s coffee but had managed to fill Petal’s food and water
bowls; her mother could buy a coffee at a dozen places on the drive in to work; her
dog, however, couldn’t open a can by himself. He
could
navigate the dry food bags and had in the past, but no one in the Hall house really
wanted
the contents of the bag spread across the kitchen floor.

Michael was on time, no surprise there. But he was tense, his eyes slightly wider
than usual, his lips compressed. His hands were rigid by his sides—which didn’t stop
Petal from nuzzling them. It also didn’t stop Michael from feeding the dog, but it
took him a minute to zone back in.

“Emma,” Mercy called from the top of the stairs, as they were just about to leave.

Emma turned.

“Jon is coming over for dinner tonight. You’ll be home?”

“I’d love to, Mom, but I promised Allison I’d—I’d do some work with her at the library.”

Her mother said nothing for a long minute. “Well. Don’t be home too late.”

“I won’t.” Emma escaped the house; she couldn’t escape the tone of her mother’s weary
voice.

“Who is Jon?” Michael asked as they headed down the walk.

“My mother’s new boyfriend.”

“Oh.”

“You can say that again.”

Michael, who was watching the ground as if he expected it to break beneath his feet
at any minute, said, “You don’t like him?”

“I—” She held her breath for ten seconds. “I don’t know him well enough to dislike
him.”

“But you don’t like him.”

She grimaced. No one else would have asked the question, because the answer was so
clear. “It’s not him, not exactly. I don’t like the fact that he’s my mother’s boyfriend.
I don’t know him at all—I just don’t want to
get
to know him. Not like that.”

“But your mother likes him.”

“Yes, clearly. And she doesn’t care if I don’t.”

“She doesn’t? Have you asked her?”

“No. We don’t often ask questions in the Hall household,” she added, speeding up slightly
and hoping for rescue by Allison if she could just reach her house under the barrage
of questions.

* * *

Allison was two minutes late and came careening around the Simner door, clutching
the backpack she hadn’t taken the time to loop over her shoulders, but Michael was
so absorbed that he didn’t notice. This should have told Emma something. Allison hit
the sidewalk taking longer than usual strides—mostly to match Emma’s.

“Michael,” Allison said, before any of the usual morning greetings could be exchanged,
“what exactly did you say to your mother last night?”

Emma froze in midstep, which, given the temperature of the morning wasn’t as hard
as it should have been. The shadows she cast in snow made brown by dirt, salt, and
many feet had become desperately interesting. She turned to look at Michael, who was
still concentrating on the ground. “I told her that we were late coming home from
Emma’s.”

“That’s all you said?”

“No. I told her about history and Mr. Taylor’s accident.”

Allison exhaled. “What did you tell her about—about Mark?”

This did get his attention, possibly because Allison’s intensity was ratcheted up
to a much higher level than usual. Attention, on the other hand, didn’t mean that
he shifted his gaze much. “I didn’t tell her anything about Mark,” he said. “You said
it wasn’t a good idea to talk about the dead.”

Allison didn’t relax much; Emma, who had started to, thought better of it when she
looked at Ally’s compressed lips. “Your mother called my mother this morning. That’s
why I’m late.”

Michael did look at Allison then, possibly to see what her expression actually was.
“My mother phoned your mother?”

Allison nodded.

“Why?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” Allison replied. She now glanced at Emma, who
shook her head. “Was your mother upset last night, Michael?”

“No.”

“Did you—did you talk to her this morning at breakfast? I mean, this morning
at all
?”

“I always talk to her in the morning.”

Allison, by dint of will and familiarity with Michael, did not pull her hair or shriek.
“Did you talk about anything related to what happened last night at all?”

He was silent while he considered the question. “Yes,” he finally replied.

Emma now stepped in. “Allison, what did she say to your mom?”

“She was worried about Michael. She asked if we knew of anything that had happened
at school—at all—that might cause him to ask her about parents killing their children
because their children weren’t
normal enough
.”

“Michael, we don’t know that that’s what happened,” Emma said, voice low, glance sweeping
the sidewalk for possible eavesdroppers.

Michael said, “We do. We do know that’s what happened.”

“No, we don’t. We know that—that Mark’s mother took him for a walk. We know that he—”
she took a deep breath. “We know that he died. But we don’t know why she left him
there. It might be—”

“Emma, I’m not stupid.”

Allison briefly raised her hands and covered her face with them. Michael, who was
genuinely sweet most of the time, was not without a temper.

“I heard what he said,” Michael continued. He’d stopped walking. “I understood what
it meant. Were you listening to him?”

“I . . . I was.”

“Why do you
think
his mother left him there?”

She had to look away from what she saw in his face. “I don’t know, Michael. I can’t
ever imagine doing that to
anyone’s
child—and I’ve babysat monsters.” She tried to smile at the joke, but it was pathetic,
even by Hall standards.

“I know I’m not normal—”

“Michael,
no one
is completely normal.”

“I know that. But—”

“I’m a Necromancer,” she said, digging hands into her hips. “How much
less
normal could a person be?”

That stopped him for a few seconds; it didn’t, however, start him walking again. Allison
glanced at her watch, but she didn’t start walking either.

“People have already tried to kill Allison because I’m a Necromancer.”

“Yes, but none of those people were her mother. Or yours. Do you think your mother
would—”

“No!”

“Why?”

“She’s my
mother
—” Emma lifted a hand because she couldn’t stop the words that had just left her mouth,
and she had no way to claw them back; not with Michael. “She knows
me
. She loves me, even when she brings strangers into
my
house that I don’t want there.”

“It’s her house, too,” Michael replied—as automatic in his response as Emma had been
in hers.

“Yes. Technically it’s entirely her house. But I live there, and she never asked me
for permission. But even if she’s disappointed at my reaction to her—her friend—she
would never just lock me out to freeze to death.”

“If she did,” Michael replied, “You could come and stay at my house.”

Emma smiled, and the smile was genuine, if pained. “Michael—your mother loves you.
She always has. Yes, you’re different. You’ve always been different—but different’s
not bad. You’re normal for
you
. I’m normal for me. Allison is normal for Allison. None of the three of us are the
same—but we’re still friends, we still care about each other.”

His shoulders slumped, half-inch by half-inch, as some of the tension left him. In
the wake of tension, however, confusion opened up his expression. “Why did she do
it, Emma?” His eyes were round; Emma thought he was close to tears. Michael had never
been particularly self-conscious about them.

“I don’t know, Michael.”

“She couldn’t have loved him.”

“No.”

“But he was her child!”

“Yes. If I could explain it, I would.” She swallowed, and added, “I’ve been thinking
of nothing else all night—because Mark wants to know as well. He wants to know more
than any of the three of us do. It happened to him. I don’t know what to say to him,”
she added, as she began—slowly—to walk. Michael was upset, yes—but being late wouldn’t
help that at all. “If you can think of anything—anything at all—”

“I have to understand it,” Michael replied.

“There’s not much to understand,” Allison told them both. “His mother is a monster.”

Michael was silent for a long moment before he turned and began to follow Emma. “She
isn’t,” he said, his voice soft. “She’s a person. If she were a monster, it would
be easier.”

* * *

“Mom?” Emma cupped her phone to muffle the pre-class noise in the hall and hoped she
was audible.

“Em? Is something wrong?”

“I—I got my library date confused. I’ll be coming home for dinner tonight. Do you
want me to pick up anything on the way home from school?”

“Milk. And eggs. Not for dinner,” she added. “But I think we’re out.” There was a
pause, and then her mother said, “Thank you, Emma.”

Emma felt a rush of something, a mix of guilt, affection, worry—and, ultimately, trust.
Michael wasn’t the only person affected by the morning’s discussion. “I’ll try, Mom.
I don’t always handle surprise well.”

Allison waved her over as she ended the call. “Amy wanted me to tell you the yearbook
committee is meeting after lunch.”

“Is she still on the warpath?”

“It’s Amy.” Allison readjusted the necklace Ernest had given her. She didn’t generally
like things hanging around her neck. Her eyes widened in a particular way, and Emma
turned; Michael was standing in front of his open locker staring vacantly at its interior.
He hadn’t removed his coat or his backpack.

Allison and Emma exchanged a single glance.

Michael had seen Necromancers. He had seen the dead. He’d even kept two dead children
amused until Emma’s arms were numb with the cold of making them visible. He’d seen
men with guns, and he’d seen their corpses. But it was Mark that had caused the internal
meltdown, because Mark’s situation seemed so similar to his own, and Mark was dead.

“Michael,” Emma said quietly, putting a hand on either shoulder.

He startled and turned.

“We’re at school now. You need to take your coat off or you’ll miss math.”

Allison took his computer out of his pack, and waited until he’d removed his coat.
She handed the computer to Michael, who stared at it as if it were a new and unknown
object. No wonder his mother had been upset; Emma hadn’t seen him this stressed since
elementary school.

“Will you take Mark home?” Michael asked.

Emma couldn’t even tell him that it wasn’t safe to talk about Mark at school. “I don’t
know.”

“You promised.”

“I did. But I don’t think his mother is going to be happy to see him, and I don’t
think that’s going to help. What would you want, if you were in Mark’s position?”

“I’d want to know
why
,” was the low, intense reply.

“Math,” she said quietly. “Whatever happens, it won’t happen until after school.”

“Can I come with you?”

Emma closed her eyes. She hadn’t lied—one didn’t, to Michael. She was afraid of what
such a confrontation would do to Mark. He was eight, but a
very
young eight. His mother had taken him out for a walk on a literally freezing January
day, and she’d left him in the ravine, returning to “normal” life without him.

What could she possibly say to Mark that would explain that? What could she do that
would give him any peace?

“Yes,” she said, after a long pause. Her voice was thick. “If I can’t talk Mark out
of it, you can come with me.”

“Allison too?”

“And Nathan,” Emma said, surrendering.

Michael inhaled and exhaled deeply. Then he straightened his shoulders and looked
around the school halls as if they’d unexpectedly coalesced when he hadn’t been paying
attention. Emma steered him toward his class, just in case.

* * *

Lunch might have been awkward, but Emma only had to endure fifteen minutes of it.
Given Eric and Chase, she wasn’t certain she’d survive five; they were in a foul mood.
They spoke normal sentences as if each word were a bullet, no matter who their target
was. Michael, who brought his own lunch, had held the table. Nothing said in the cafeteria
line—and admittedly, on committee meeting days, Emma got to jump to the head of the
line—had indicated rage or fury.

But Michael was silent throughout most of lunch; not even Connell’s question about
mana decks could fully engage him.

Emma was hugely relieved when she had to leave the table to attend the yearbook committee
meeting; she threw Allison one guilty look. Allison grimaced. Emma wasn’t likely to
be able to budge Chase, Eric,
or
Michael today. If she missed the yearbook committee meeting, she’d be adding angry
Amy to the mix for no reason.

* * *

“I can’t understand,” Chase said, as Emma all but fled the cafeteria, “why everyone’s
so terrified of Amy.”

“Given the caliber of your enemies, that’s understandable,” Allison replied. “But
think about it on the inside of our lives for a minute. Amy is the reigning queen
of the graduating year. She is gorgeous, she’s on the Head’s honor roll, she’s talented,
and she knows everyone. If she wants to make your life miserable, you will—while in
school—be miserable.”

“Amy can be nice,” Michael interjected. “She’s not a bully.”

“I wouldn’t call her a bully,” Allison replied, realizing that she was skirting the
edge of exactly that. “It’s not that she makes people suffer because she enjoys random
suffering. If she makes you suffer, she’s absolutely certain there’s a good reason
for it. It just happens to be Amy’s version of a good reason. But she’s a steamroller.
She’s driving heavy machinery while the rest of us are digging ditches with our hands.”

“Have you ever been on her bad side?” Chase asked.