The Cost of Knowing, page 18
“Do you think Cobra Katjee and Leviathan will be there?” he asks.
My heart skips at the thought of being among so many people in such a huge crowd, but I reply with a straight face anyway.
“Course!” I say, surprised he’s changing the subject back to Shiv. “He never goes anywhere without the Dragons.”
“Do you think Cobra will do his drum solo from ‘The Rush’? That’s my favorite part.”
“Maybe.” I shrug. We keep walking, and I spot a poster on the front door of Mikkelson’s Bokhandel, a Swedish bookstore. It’s Shiv, front and center, screaming into the camera with his eyes shut tight and his fists clenched. Sweat is flying all over the place, like he’s just run a marathon, and the veins in his neck are so strained, they look like they could pop right through his skin. Leviathan is to his right, a monster of a man with a big bald head and a glare so menacing even the poster is terrifying, and he’s not even looking at the camera. Cobra Katjee is on the left, with that sharp jawline of his, red bandanna around his forehead, and his huge black-and-silver sweatshirt hood pulled over his head in the exaggerated shape of a cobra hood.
Isaiah sees me staring as we walk past, and he stops to look.
“I wanna be like him when I grow up.”
When. I. Grow. Up. What a privilege it is to be able to say those words. I quietly promise myself I’ll never take it for granted again.
“Like him, how?” I ask.
He doesn’t take his eyes off the poster as he says, “I want friends.”
I didn’t expect that.
“You don’t have friends?” I ask. “You’ve got me, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” he says, his voice almost a whisper. “But I want to leave my room and stuff. You know. Like we used to. I want to play basketball. Like, outside. With friends.”
I nod. I get it. I shouldn’t have assumed that Isaiah was holing himself up in his room because he wanted to. I should’ve checked in. I should’ve been there.
I sigh and try to cheer him up now.
“Come on,” I say. “This is no time to be sad. We’re about to see Shiv! Aren’t you excited?” I wrap my arm around his neck and pull him close, careful to keep my fist closed.
“I mean,” he says, “kinda? But also, this is scary.” He reaches up to pry my arm from around him. “Do you think there will be a lot of people there? Like, hundreds?”
I sigh and move my tongue around nervously inside my too-dry mouth.
There will definitely be a lot of people there.
“I don’t know,” I say, “but if you stay close to me, I promise you’ll be okay.”
We keep walking until we turn the corner to the venue and spot the line of cars at a standstill, waiting to get in. Only a few people are on foot, many carrying foldable lawn chairs and blankets. The Wall is an outdoor venue, and Chicago nights can get cold, even in the summer. I’m already wishing I’d packed at least a sweatshirt. But I wanted to wear the only Shiv memorabilia I own—a black windbreaker with a holographic black dragon in the middle that flickers silver when it catches the light just right, and gray smoke climbing up toward the collar.
But damn, it’s chilly.
I look down at Isaiah and ask, “You good?”
He nods, but his arms are folded, and his bony shoulders are scrunched up around his neck. At every turn, I’m spotting things I could do better, ways I could be a better big brother. Aunt Mackie would’ve made sure we brought something warmer, just in case.
We walk past a huge map of the parking lot, and I smile. If you’re new to Shiv Skeptic, if you’ve only heard his top singles, if the words The Rush mean nothing to you, the first thing you should know about him is that he doesn’t do small. He doesn’t do subtle. He doesn’t do soft.
And he doesn’t do anything by accident.
The map of the parking lot is a huge spiral, with an exit leading out the way cars come in. It’s arranged in the shape of the dragon glyph, the symbol of the Dragons. It’s on every album, it’s in the middle of the dragon’s forehead on every piece of merch, and it’s in the middle of Cobra Katjee’s bandanna.
“Hey, look!” cries Isaiah suddenly, grabbing my wrist and shaking it. His finger brushes against my palm, just under my thumb, and a vision flashes in my head and I panic. No, no, no. It’s as strong as the ones I get with Talia, sucking my brain into a vacuum, making my whole body tense up, my teeth clench. Everything hurts. Everything’s in sepia. I see Isaiah turning around where we stand, rows of headlights behind us as cars find the dwindling open spots in the parking lot. And then this vision blends with a familiar one—one I’ve rearranged my whole life to avoid. Talia, standing with headlights behind her, arms crossed, hair dark, eyes glaring. He lets go, and I suck in a breath. I blink away the vision, and we’re back. I yank away my hand.
No way. That can’t happen. Talia’s hair is blue. And she’s not here.
“Man, be careful!” I snap. He looks up at me, startled, his eyes wide with something I immediately recognize. Fear. The last thing I wanted for him in his last days on earth. “Hey,” I say. “I didn’t mean—I mean, I’m sorry. You touched my hand, and it triggered a weird vision.”
“Oh. Sorry, Alex.”
One of only a few times he’s called me by name. He says it so sweetly, like he’s genuinely sorry for causing me that pain. He should know. He sees things too.
“Now, what am I supposed to be looking at?” I ask. A familiar voice answers my question, but it’s not Isaiah’s. It’s behind me.
“Alex?”
I turn to look, paralyzed when I see Talia behind us. She’s wearing that black sundress and black combat boots with silver buckles that go all the way to her knees. Her lips are jet-black, and her hair is suddenly dark and curly again, the blue gone. Her face is flawless—makeup done so well she looks like a doll, and her eyes are framed in heavy, sharp black eyeliner. My blood goes still in my veins. Time stops. I can’t breathe.
It’s really happening.
Now.
“Talia, you look… different.”
I already knew she’d get rid of the blue hair and go back to dark. But I didn’t think it would happen this fast.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she hisses, her eyes narrow. She glances at Isaiah, who’s looking at her, and then up at me, with fear. I know I have to defuse this situation. I know how this must look to her. I decline her invitation to see Shiv, and then suddenly I’m here with Isaiah.
“Thought you couldn’t come tonight,” she growls, folding her arms and cocking her hips to one side.
Oh God, now I’ve really done it.
“No,” I say, a little too fast. “Talia, I just wanted to hang with Isaiah tonight. I—”
“Sure,” she says. “And we couldn’t all go together? Why didn’t you want me here, Alex? What’s going on with you?”
“Talia,” I say, stepping forward and pressing my hands together in front of my lips. “On God, there’s nothing wrong. I just—”
“You’ve been acting weird. First you won’t hold my hand, and now you’re making excuses to avoid me? I thought you’d just been grieving ever since…” She lets the rest of the sentence evaporate before moving on. “All those times you said you just wanted to stay home. That you were too tired, too anxious. All those days you skipped out on visiting Shaun with me. The times when I needed you most. You know why I fell in love with you, Alex? You used to care. Now it feels like you’re a million miles away.”
“Talia—”
She holds up her hand for silence so sharply I flinch, thinking she’s going to slap me, but then she glares at me and says, “It’s over, Alex. I can’t take this anymore.”
Over?
She can’t mean that. I have to stop this.
“Talia, please let me explain. There’s a good reason for this, I swear.”
That physical response I get—the urge to do something drastic and probably reckless to save this situation, like I did that day at the pool—wells in me like a tidal wave, and I consider the unthinkable. I remember all the times I’ve had to dodge Talia’s touch and explained away all the gloves I’ve worn with some excuse about an infected cut on my thumb or just a general fear of germs. Am I really about to throw all that away? All that effort? All my lies? All my secrets? I know what I have to do. I glance down at Isaiah in a silent apology, because this secret that he and I have each kept to ourselves for almost four years now, the thing that’s bonded us closer in the last few days than anything else in the world, is about to be Talia’s secret too.
Another couple walks past us, hand in hand—one guy is wearing plaid flannel and the other is in a black leather jacket. They both glance at me and Talia, and I realize we’re probably making a scene. Heat floods my cheeks, but I try not to look too flustered as I weave my biggest secret into easily digestible words.
“I can, uh,” I begin. Her eyebrows fly up and she purses her lips, as if she’s waiting for news she knows isn’t going to convince her of anything. “I can, uh, see things.”
“See things?” she asks, the sarcasm dark and biting on her tongue.
I nod.
“Yeah, uh, like…”
Come on, Alex, think of an example.
“If I touch things, I can… kinda see what will happen to them… in the next few seconds.”
She’s silent for a long moment before she rolls her eyes and sighs. “What are you talking about?”
“Ever since the accident,” I say. “I swear it’s true. And I predicted something that made me have to say no to you, no to going to this concert with you tonight.”
“How do I know you’re not lying about that?” she asks. “You’ve been dishonest enough with so many other things already.”
“I swear, Talia, it’s true!” I’m raising my voice now, but I don’t care. “Why do you think I freeze up whenever I get in my car and touch the wheel? Huh? Why do you think I’m afraid to touch you anymore? Do you really think it’s because I don’t like you?”
It’s right on the tip of my tongue.
I love you.
Say it, Alex, you coward. This might be your only shot.
It hangs there in the air, an empty space where my words should be. But she’s staring at me like she would stare at a stranger, sizing me up, trying to figure me out. I swallow, praying she believes me.
“All this time I thought you just had anxiety,” she says, shaking her head. Her eyes are glossy, and a tear falls black from her eye, leaving a stream of gray down her airbrushed face. “This is… this is… something else.”
It hurts, how she’s looking at me. Like she’s afraid of me.
“Talia, no,” I plead. “No, it’s not like that.”
I have to find something to prove to her that this is real. All I have is my shirt, my keys, my phone, my wallet, and my charger. Then a vision swells to life. And I see a mosquito perched on beige skin, up close, with its stinger sunk deep, and I blink away the sight and notice the tiniest tingle in my left ring finger, just below the second knuckle. I keep my eyes on Talia and say, calmly, “There’s a mosquito on my left ring finger, just below my second knuckle. When I lift my hand up, it’s going to fly off, just past your face, and you’re going to try to swat it away, but you’ll accidentally hit yourself in the face.”
Isaiah lets out a chuckle at that, and I have to smile. “It’s true,” I say, raising my hand in front of my face. The tiny black sucker with the swollen red belly takes off, zooming straight at Talia, who squeals and swats at it, and sure enough, slaps herself in the face. She almost stumbles into the road, where the line of cars is still at a standstill, and I reach forward instinctively to grab her, but then I realize I can’t—or am too afraid to.
Luckily, she catches herself before that happens and brushes her curls out of her face, somehow angrier now than she was before. Her forehead is burning red as she says, “That doesn’t prove anything.”
“It’s true, Talia,” offers Isaiah. “Ever since the accident that killed our parents, we both see things.”
I look down at him gratefully. Coming to my rescue with his biggest secret laid bare for her to see, just when I needed him most. I don’t deserve him. She looks questioningly down at Isaiah, whose cheekiness and affinity for playing practical jokes is now working against our credibility. But it looks like his word is having some effect. Her expression is softening.
“You can see the future?” she asks.
I nod.
“Of anything you touch.”
“Yes.”
“Of… me.”
“Of us.”
“That’s why you won’t get close to me? You’re afraid to see our future?”
“I mean, kinda?” I ask. Is it really that far-fetched? I’ve been afraid to touch her because I’ve been afraid of this. This very moment, when she’s looking at me like I’ve become her worst enemy. And for the first time… I have no idea what happens next.
No idea.
I clench my fists, stepping into the future unknown, with Talia.
“I guess… I saw this moment coming, and… I didn’t want it to?” I venture. “So I didn’t get too close. I didn’t want… I don’t know.” Come on, Alex, get your words together. My eyes are brimming with tears, and I look up at her. “I knew after tonight I was probably going to lose you, because you don’t trust me anymore. And I didn’t want to make it harder than it had to be.”
Isaiah’s eyes are huge when he looks up at me again and says, “I’m going to go do… something… somewhere else. I’ll see you inside, Alex.”
“Uh, no?” I demand. “You’re twelve. You’re staying right here with me.”
“Wait,” says Talia, her voice suddenly shrill. “If you started getting these visions after the accident that took your parents, then… did you see…”
Oh God, please don’t.
I’m sending every telepathic wave I can, every silent plea for her not to bring this up here. Not in front of Isaiah. Not tonight. Any other night.
She swallows, and for a minute I’m hopeful she catches my drift, but she asks it anyway, in a pathetic whisper. “Did you see… Shaun’s accident… before it happened?”
My cheeks are hot. It’s suddenly hard to breathe. I stare at my shoes as I clamp my jaw shut, breathing against the tears I know are forming. Fuck. I’m afraid to talk. I’m afraid to not talk. I don’t know which I’m more afraid of. I knew. Of course I knew. I knew, and I ran anyway.
“You knew?!” she screams. Her voice cuts through the air like a whip, echoing through the night air, cutting deep. A young woman leans out the window of the car next to us, but I think I’m too broken to be embarrassed. “¡Sabías que iba a morir y no me dijiste nada!” shrieks Talia, stepping back from me. Two more tears stream down her face. “¡No me dijiste nada! You knew, and you didn’t even tell me. I could’ve stopped him from getting into that car that day! We could’ve tried to stop it! Shaun may have been your friend, but he was my brother!”
My eyes are burning, and I press my fingers into my eyes and say, with as much strength as I have left, “I wanted to tell you.”
“I don’t give a fuck what you wanted to tell me! You should’ve just been honest with me, Alex! You should’ve told me!”
“Hey!” hollers a voice from somewhere nearby, probably a driver of one of the cars that’s already agitated at having to be stuck in traffic on the way to see an outrageously expensive Shiv Skeptic concert. “Shut the hell up!” he yells.
Talia turns her rage toward where the voice came from.
“¡Me cago en tu puta madre!” she fires back without missing a beat. I don’t know what exactly she said, but I know what “puta” means, and I know what “madre” means, and I can piece it together.
“Talia, please,” I say. I can’t tell her to calm down. Not without making things much, much worse. “Can we talk about this?”
“I have nothing to say to you,” she spits, marching past me in the direction of the concert. I watch her go, with the huge white strobe lights lighting up the sky beyond her. The silver buckles of her boots jingle quieter and quieter and quieter as she goes. And I’m left standing here, next to Isaiah, who I’m sure doesn’t know what to say any more than I do. I take a deep breath and press the heels of my hands into my eyes, and I feel like I’m going to break.
This is too much.
This is all just too fucking much.
I just want to stand here and cry.
I feel a tiny tug at the corner of my shirt, and I look down at Isaiah, who I’m surprised to find smiling up at me.
“Thanks,” he says.
“For what, man?” I croak. I clear my throat and try again. “For what?”
“You didn’t tell her what I did.”
Now I’m confused.
“What did you do?”
“You know,” he says with a shrug, “You saw it.”
“Saw what, man?” I ask. I might sound a bit frustrated, but I don’t care. I am frustrated. I’m frustrated and tired and cold and wounded. “Just say it.”
He gets real quiet for a minute and looks down at the pavement.
“You saw how Shaun died.”
I freeze, connecting the two. What Isaiah did. How Shaun died.
“What did you do, Isaiah?” I ask.
“It was an accident,” he pleads, taking a step back from me and holding out his hands like I’m about to fight him. “I didn’t mean—I mean, I…”
“Look, Isaiah,” I huff, “I don’t want to get any madder than I already am, okay? I’ma need you to start speaking in complete fucking sentences real soon.”
“I…,” he says, and sniffs. His voice is squeaky and scratchy, and he buries his face in his hands and admits, “I shouldn’t have left my ball outside. I left it. I was at Shaun’s house kicking it around and it landed on our roof and I… I left it.”
He left his ball outside.
Shaun’s mother Maria crashed their car.
I’m not following.
But he’s sobbing now, with his hands over his face, and I realize I’ve made a horrible mistake. I’ve kicked him when he’s down. I really am the worst big brother in the entire world. I lean down in front of him, careful to keep my hands off the pavement, and look up at him.
