Page 201 of Envious Of Fire
The cage. The lion. Markadian. “You don’t have to explain,”Kyle reassures him, patting his back. “I understand.”
“Idowant to play again someday. Just …” Kaleb looks at his brother. “… not yet.”
Kyle gives his brother a sympathetic smile, decides not to say anything further, and nods with understanding.
“By the way …” Kaleb frowns in thought. “I’ve been thinking a lot lately. About the past. I know this is kind of random, but, um, do you … remember that fortune teller lady …?”
“Who?” asks Kyle at once. Then a second’s thought retrieves the memory. “Oh. You mean that one Halloween …?”
“Yeah. Me, you, and your friend Brock. We saw that one old lady. You and Brock thought she was weird. I just thought she was nice. She gave me candy.”
“I can’t believe you remember that,” laughs Kyle. “You were so little when we saw her.”
“She read our futures,” says Kaleb, gazing off, as if picturing her. “She told me I’d love music, but that at first I would hate it. I remember that part. Maybe she said something else, too, but I … I guess it’s that part I keep thinking about.”
“Why are you bringing her up?”
Kaleb peers at Kyle. “It’s just that lately, I’ve been dreaming about that night, that one Halloween. A lot. Almost every night.”
That surprises Kyle. “Every night …?”
“Do you think she’s real? About reading the future? Like …” Kaleb’s voice lowers. “Like Cade is?”
“Nah, fuck this,” blurts Nico, surprising both Kyle and Kaleb, then he turns around abruptly and starts walking back, shaking his head and muttering to himself.
Kaleb slips from his brother’s arm. “Nico? What’s wrong?”
“Can’t. Can’t do it. Can’t do this lovey-dovey fake shit.” He keeps marching the other way back home.
Kaleb goes after him. “Hey, c’mon, stop. We’re just here to relax with friends, have a drink. It’s not fake.”
“Not fake?” Nico stops, turns back around so suddenly, Kaleb has to take a step back. “Everyone in that bar is fake. Everyone in this town. You’re all pretending to be happy, lying to yourselves all day long. What’s there to be so fucking happy about?”
“That we’re alive,” says Kaleb. “That we’ve all survived some of the most unthinkable things.”
“Yeah, except that isn’t true.” Nico comes right up to Kaleb’s face, jabs a finger at his own chest. “Ididn’tsurvive.”
“You know what I meant. C’mon.”
“You want a glimpse of the future? Is that why you’re talking about fortune teller ladies? Want to know what’s coming? I’ll tell you what’s coming, I’ll tell you right now, plain as day. Another month from now, maybe even sooner than that, every human in this place is gonna starve. Then everyone is gonna be dead, one by one. Including you.”
“Nico …”
“And then who’ll be left? Your brother. Raya. That asshole motherfucker Drake. And me. The four of us, trapped inside this hellhole for the rest of eternity, until evenwestarve, lose our minds, and eat each other up. That’s our future. What a fairytale. I can’t wait.” Nico turns and heads off again.
Kaleb sighs. “This is actually about your brother and our big bakery dream, isn’t it.”
That stops Nico.
Kaleb takes a step, rethinks it, stays in place. “I don’t know how, I don’t know when … but you’ll still get to San Diego. You and Matteo will reunite. Maybe I could come with you, meet your brother, take in the scent of that delicious bakery. I dream of it every night. Cade and Layna … they will find a way past the wall, I promise you. You’ll get to see your brother again.”
“See me? You want … You want my brother to see me? Like this? Tell me, Kaleb. How am I gonna enjoy our life on the beachwhen I can’t touch sunlight without exploding? How am I gonna run a bakery with my brother when I can’t even—” He chokes on his words and shakes his head, silent for a time. “I’d rather just …” His voice tightens up. “I would rather have died a hero … than to live asthis. As one ofthem. Anabominationof nature.”
From the door of the bar comes Raya’s voice. “So that’s what we are?” she calls out dryly, eyes half lidded, annoyed. “We’re all a bunch of abominations? Your preacher friend you brought with you doesn’t think so. He spoke at the church last Sunday. It was a moving speech. I would have shed a tear were I capable. He said if this world is going to be saved, it will need people like us to stand against the ‘true evil’ … Demipire ‘abominations’like you and me.”
Nico moves past Kaleb, stops halfway to Raya. “Y’know why he flatters you? Same reason us Bloods once revered your kind as our gods and goddesses when we were just prisoners beneath your feet.” He leans in. “He—and all the rest of this town—are fuckingafraidof you.”
Raya flinches, like his words are a needle that pricked her.
