Page 13 of In This Iron Ground
“They’re fine,” he said shortly, remembering a second later what Koko had told him the other day. Werewolves could sense the lies of the untrained, a pattern of sweat and heartbeat and hormones. “What I mean is—what I meant was that, that they’re not my parents. They’re just…I don’t want to talk about it,” he finished in a small voice, his throat feeling strange and tight like there was a lemon wedge stuck there.
“Okay. That’s okay, Damien,” Cameron said, but it still took a while for people to start eating again. It was only when conversation had resurfaced, subdued, that Damien felt he could thaw himself from his position. When he chanced a glance at Koko, she was looking back with a contrite expression, mouthingSorryat him. Damien gave her half a strained smile. It was the first and last time she brought up the topic.
If Damien didn’t spend the time before dinner with Koko, he’d spend it with the twins, having energy enough to meet theirs. Damien was constantly in stitches when playing with Dee, especially the memorable day she had proudly repeated a phrase she had heard when she was taken to the park that morning, belting out at the top of her lungs, “Titty-sucker motherfucker!” Damien had almost coughed up a lung laughing, until Mia had stormed into the room, red-faced, and demanded to know what was going on.
That had shut Damien right up, flinching away from her. “I didn’t teach it to her, I swear!”
Mia had looked at him, her matter of fact, “I know that, honey,” making him dizzy.
After dinner, however, Damien always went to Hakan’s room. They sat beside each other at dinner, and one time they had gotten to talking aboutPortal, which Hakan owned. To Damien’s surprise, Hakan invited him to his room after they had all washed up to play the game. From then on, it had become routine, Hakan looking at Damien expectantly after the meal. Damien had no idea why Hakan, seeming much older at fifteen years of age compared to Damien’s thirteen, would even give him the time of day, but he did.
There was something about Hakan that made Damien feel settled. Despite all the rooms being soundproofed, Hakan’s room seemed the quietest in the house. It was the only type of silence Damien had ever found truly soothing. Damien wouldn’t have described Hakan asshy, but he was definitely introverted. Reserved, although he opened up and relaxed around Damien as time went on.
Despite all this, there was also something discomfiting about Hakan. A look in his eyes that reminded Damien of Mia. A way he had when he listened, like he was looking right through you, right into you.
That wasn’t to say that Hakan was particularly intense with Damien most of the time. Mainly, they played video games, and this served as a good conduit for casual conversation.
Damien learnt how sore of a loser Hakan was, to the point of half-moon shifting once. Damien had stared in fascination as hair had grown on his face, his orbital and jaw bones shifting so that the former sunk whilst the latter elongated. His nostrils shrunk slightly as his teeth elongated into fangs. Hakan’s eyes, normally so dark, took on a strange quality. They became a little more translucent, reflecting light like the eyes of an animal of the night.
“Dude…” Damien said before he started laughing at the fact that he’d gotten Hakan angry enough to make him shift.
“Only you would laugh at that,” Hakan had muttered as he shifted back, although he was also smiling.
Damien learnt that Hakan liked running and that his favourite lessons were English and Spanish. He learnt that his favourite sweets were Red Vines, which Damien teased him about for having the blandest taste in candy ever.
Unlike Koko, Hakan tried to ask Damien about his past a few times, though Damien’s reaction taught him quickly to stop. Damien spent so much energy trying not to think about certain things that even someone mentioning them filled him with a sudden fear, as if everything he pushed down was about to leap up from the shadows and swallow him whole.
After Damien’s outburst during that one dinner, however, Hakan brought it up again when they were alone in his room.
“You were lying when you said they were fine. The McKenzies,” Hakan said almost as soon as the door to his room closed. Damien turned to him, surprised with the uncharacteristic bluntness, although the stubborn clench of Hakan’s jaw was familiar.
“Isn’t it, like, rude or something to point out other people’s physiological responses? I’m pretty sure that has to be frowned upon,” Damien bit back, but Hakan only frowned at him, steadfast. “I don’t wanna talk about it, Hakan, okay?” Damien said, turning away from him.
“But—”
“Hakan,please,” Damien said. “Just, please, I don’t wanna talk about it, okay? It has nothing to do…it’s notrelevant. Just—drop it, okay?” Damien sat on the bed, staring at his clenched fists pressed against his knees.
After a moment, Hakan capitulated. He didn’t seem happy about it, but Damien was grateful. There was no way he was bringing all that there, to the one good place in Damien’s life. Although he knew that the main reason the Salgados invited him was to keep tabs on him and their secret, he couldn’t help but let himself enjoy his time there. Mia became serious once in a while, especially when Damien got detentions, but she never made him feel stupid or useless. She never shouted or smacked him. Damien couldn’t help but bask in it.
Despite how wonderful it was at the Salgados’, his time there never managed to balance out what it was like at school and at the McKenzies’. Being at the Salgados’ was an oasis in an endless desert. It seemed to serve as juxtaposition, as a way of making starker Damien’s thirst, his hunger.
Sometimes, Damien felt like he didn’t have the energy to get to the next sip of the oasis. That he didn’t have it in him to keep walking in that scorching solitude, the hatred he could feel, inside and out. It peeled his skin away, leaving him calloused and blank.
CHAPTER THREE
March dawned colder than expected and Damien struggled to sleep at night, kicking off his sheets in nightmares and then waking up bound by ropes to the bedposts and shivering, without a hope to cover himself again.
He woke up on a Thursday groggy, his head pounding. He lay motionless as Mrs. McKenzie untied him.
He was so tired. Everything in him was dust.
School days when he was this exhausted were always torture. He was easily distracted, looking out the window or slipping into sudden bursts of chatter, and was told off constantly. The threads between his brain and his body were cut and each would work against the other until he was sent out of the classroom once again.
He sat outside the Vice Principal’s office and stared at nothing, wishing he could dissipate into the air and drift away. The only thing that usually made this type of day better was going to the Salgados’, but even that failed to cheer him up. He wished he could turn their invitation down but that would simply mean going back to the McKenzies’.
Damien fantasized as he sat there. He imagined having a home to go to at the end of the day where he could rest. It was like a lump in his throat, the idea of going home.Home. Where his worst worry would be what’s for dinner. Where he’d be able to go to his room and lay on his bed without being afraid of it, where he’d be able to go online or play video games and then do his homework at his own pace, where he’d be safe, where he’d be lov—
Damien closed his eyes. He folded the thoughts down, pressing them into the infecund soil of his mind.
