V in V was different. It was the first and last thing I’d done that was wholly mine.
I had to remember how to work alone. While gestating a still-secret human. Also alone. While finding out what had gone so bad wrong with my Birchie and deciding what to do about it. While supporting Rachel long-distance as her marriage imploded, which was like attempting to cuddle a cat who didn’t want to be picked up, and now the cat was three states away.
I had to try, though. I was the only person on the planet who even knew that Rachel was in trouble. Except, of course, for Lavender. Who was barely speaking to me. My niece was a hunchy thread of palpitating blond misery beside me, her face pointed decidedly away, out the window. I’d gotten nothing but sour nods and shrugs and one-word answers ever since I’d picked up her and her ridiculous Louis Vuitton three-piece luggage set at Rachel’s early this morning.
She was so tiny that I wondered if she should be in the front seat. She hadn’t asked, though. She’d just gotten in, and Rachel had said nothing. Lavender was heading into eighth grade, and Rachel must have finally lost the “You have to be a hundred pounds” argument. Lavender had been born so premature that she might never be a hundred pounds. Lord, if we got into a wreck, the air bag might well kill her. Her head was the size of a little cantaloupe, and her hands looked like doll hands, folded under the brand-new breasts that were pushing at her T-shirt.
“I’m glad you’re with me,” I told her, and it was only mostly a lie. Usually I liked traveling with Lavender, who was into manga and Magic: The Gathering and could use words like “Whedonverse” correctly in a sentence. I made up for it by saying an immediate truth. “And sometimes it’s good to get away from home.”
“Maya got a trip to Paris,” Lavender said.
It was the longest sentence she’d said all day.
“You’d rather be in Paris? Me, too, babe.”
It sounded lovely, actually, skipping off to eat meringues and macarons and wander the Louvre with my usually delightful niece. In We-Go-Straight-to-Paris World, Birchie was healthy and hail, walking with Miss Wattie to the fruit stand to pinch-test the tomatoes.
“Well, I don’t want to be in Alabama,” Lavender said. “Maya’s gramma took her for two weeks, and when she got home, everything was done already.”
“What was done?” I asked, and even as the stupid question fell out of my stupid mouth, I regretted it.
“The stuff for the divorce,” Lavender told the huge bank of kudzu we were passing on the right. “Maya got off the plane, and only her mom was there to pick her up. Her dad was waiting to meet them at the Scoopery. They bought her a Death by Chocolate sundae, even though her mom was always like, ‘Sugar is the devil.’ Her dad had moved to an apartment already. Her mom had packed half of her stuff to go in her new bedroom there. It was like, ‘Here, this happened. Live with it, and have this ice cream because we think you’re either five or stupid.’ Now she has about a million pimples, because her dad lets her eat whatever she wants on his weekends to piss her mom off. Her mom’s never home, because she’s dating every creep there is on JDate, which, gross, and her dad’s girlfriend moved in, and she’s like twenty-six, so it’s even grosser. Maya already tried pot, and she dyed her hair green, and she hates everyone. We’re not even friends anymore, because she hangs with the burners.”
The saddest part was how flat she said it. Like this was regular, and now it was her turn. Up until now she’d been so protected; she hadn’t known that no one grew up without collecting dings and broken edges. I hated standing witness to this first hard blow, hated hearing the shiver and crack of her faith.
“Lavender, that’s not going to happen to you,” I said. I couldn’t stop her hurting, but I wouldn’t let it ruin her. Not if I could help it.
“I’m not going to smoke pot and get pimples?” Lavender said. “Or Mom and Dad aren’t getting a divorce?”
She knew the answer to the second question better than I did. She didn’t wait to hear my answer anyway. She turned her face to the window and popped her earbuds in, jacking up the music on her phone so loud that I could hear the tinny whisper of some pop boy wailing in falsetto about love.
I took a cleansing breath and refocused on Violence, suspended in midleap over the cityscape. She’s looking down, grinning her savage grin. There was only one word on that whole first page, written inside a small white square to show that it was Violence’s thought, not dialogue.
Hello.
She’s seen Violet, trit-trotting through the narrow, trash-strewn alleyway below. In the second panel—and in every panel where Violet is seen through Violence’s eyes—her footsteps leave a trail of flowers and vines and butterflies and yearning baby rabbits. It was a little embarrassing to remember exactly how über-pretty and pure I’d made my avatar. Violence, who has landed on a rooftop now, looks right at her and thinks, You are a living sunbeam in this black and filthy place.
On the next page, shapes rise out of the shadows and coalesce into a gang that follows Violet. Well, I was young, and hurting enough to turn one sad, selfish JJ into a pack of evil boys, bent on mayhem. Violence, watching them stalk the living embodiment of my own innocence down an alley, thinks, Like any light in darkness, you attract.
She follows the gang, slithering along the roofline.
The shadow boys call out to Violet. She speeds up, looking for a way back to a busy street, a lighted store. But she has taken a wrong turn. The alley dead-ends, and the boys encircle her, blocking much of her yellow light. She holds her purse out in front of her. As if they want something so simple, so easily abandoned as a purse. Her eyes are full of tears that have not spilled yet. Nothing has been spilled yet.
From her perch Violence watches, and through her eyes the boys are hunchbacked and long-snouted, more hyena than human. She starts creeping down the wall behind them.
Your light has called these feral children. And something worse . . .
One boy bats the purse to the ground, and another knocks Violet’s hat off. A third grabs at her shoulder, snapping the strap of her sundress with a ping.
Your light has called me.
Violet falls to her knees. As she covers her eyes with her hands, Violence comes to ground behind them. The snicking of her long knives being drawn gets their attention. Then it is all carnage, because this is what Violence brings. She tears and bites and slices, making bad boys into broken heaps and pieces.
Live, scrap of sunshine. Live to warm me.