Life is Strange, page 9
“There’s no shame in needing to feel numb for however long it lasts,” I’d said, “if it gets you through another day.”
I did that. I saw the rage she felt toward her own child, and I heaped confusion and ambiguity right on top. I wiped Charlotte’s slate of emotion clean, took it all on myself, left her blank and empty.
I won’t let Biggs numb himself to this.
Mayor Biggs turns to leave, and Steph is pulling me away, but what if I just…
I reach forward into that purple aura over his head, and a rush of emotion comes over me. I clench my hand tighter, almost into a fist.
If some stronger emotion would make Biggs see just what a serious situation this is, then maybe I’m the only one who can make that happen.
Mom said Grandmother used to tell her, “The tapestry of anger is woven with fear.”
It’s not hard to translate.
The cloud around him turns blood red and radiates like a supernova in all directions as I clamp my hand shut and fall to one knee in exhaustion.
“Alex!” exclaims Steph, running behind to help me back up.
I open my eyes and I see Mayor Biggs turning to look at us. “Y’all alright?”
“Yes!” I say, so fast that my voice cracks. I clear my throat and stand again, ignoring the wobbling in my knees. “Yup, just uh… a little dehydrated.”
“Convenience store’s open,” he says tersely, nodding just up the road. I caught that tone switch. His steps are heavy as he turns to leave again, and I breathe a sigh of relief that I got away with that.
As soon as Mayor Biggs is out of earshot, Steph is all up in my ear, hanging onto my arm so tight I feel like it might fall off.
“What’d you see?!” she whisper-demands at me. “And are you okay?”
That last question settles deep in my chest like a cooling salve, and I feel my shoulders relax a little. I reach up and squeeze her right back, grateful for her care.
And then I try to think of how to answer that…
What did I see?
It takes me a moment to remember. And then her name.
“Magnolia,” I say, so softly Steph doesn’t quite hear me.
“Huh?” she asks.
This time, the full weight of the name catches in my throat, and my voice comes out like a croak.
“Magnolia,” I say. “Mayor Biggs’ daughter.”
Steph gets quiet and relaxes her grip a little.
“I… don’t remember him naming a Magnolia.”
“She died,” I say, the word biting through the air just as the wind picks up a little. “She was the thirteenth.”
“Oh,” replies Steph, pulling away. I can almost feel her thinking next to me in the silence, thinking of what to say maybe? What to do? She steps in front of me and wraps her arms around me.
“We don’t have to do this,” she says. “You know you can back out anytime.”
I shake my head and embrace her back. No. This means even more that I have to do this. I can’t just walk away from so many hurting people whose lives are being threatened over a water shortage. Barbazal citizens who have been here for decades are looking at uprooting their whole lives over this. I have to do something. For all of Barbazal.
For Magnolia.
I can’t take away their emotions, I know that now. But maybe rearranging them a bit would help, starting with making Biggs care.
I look back up at Mayor Biggs’ home, and Steph follows my gaze.
“Look, Alex,” says Steph, “I hate to insist on it, but… this is really wearing on you. Let’s just get the pistons and go, okay? I’m really worried about you.”
I keep staring at the house.
“Alex?”
“Huh?” I ask, snapped out of it. Steph is looking down at me with eyes narrowed in worry.
“I’m fine!” I say, way too quickly. “I’m good, really. I just want to talk to Jonah and—” I pull away, wipe my eyes again and clear my throat. “—talk some sense into him about this climate situation.”
“Before, you said you wanted to find out what he really thought about climate change. Now you’re hoping to ‘talk some sense into him’? What changed?”
“Nothing,” I say. “I mean—”
“You didn’t just see Magnolia, did you?” she asks. “There’s more to it, isn’t there?”
I sigh, unable to hide from Steph any longer.
“I saw all of Mayor Biggs’ daughters. They were standing around a magnolia tree. And the oldest, Clover…”
I tell her everything. About Clover, about the sisters, about the tree.
“The water situation is so bad, Clover couldn’t even keep her goldfish. We have to do something, Steph. I have to talk to Jonah.”
And finally, I tell her about dialing up Mayor Biggs’ anger.
“You… what?!”
“Shh!”
“Ugh!” She paces in front of me. “You… I just… This is such a bad idea. You just gave him a lit torch!”
I put it together.
“When… we’re in a drought?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” she sighs. “Look, Alex, I just… hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I promise, I’ve got this,” I assure her. “I’ve had these powers for how long?”
She looks me up and down.
“Long enough to get comfortable with them.”
“I’ve mastered them, okay?” I retort, surprised to hear the snip in my own voice. I soften. “Look, Steph, I appreciate the concern, but you have to trust me on this. I’ve learned from my mistakes. I know what I’m doing.”
She’s standing with her arms cradled around herself, staring at her sneakers with her forehead wrinkled in deep thought.
“I just,” she starts, sighing deeply and shrugging, “I also want to make sure your mental health is okay? These are… big emotions to be experiencing with these people. I know it takes a lot out of you. I know what it’s like.”
It’s a punch in the gut, remembering Steph’s own struggle with depression.
She’s been through so much.
And yet, here she is, worried for me.
I smile and reach forward to cup her chin, even though she’s just an inch taller than me. “It will be, once I help these people.”
Her eyes flicker with something.
“Helping these people won’t undo what happened with Charlotte.”
Another punch straight to the gut.
“I know,” I swallow. “But, even if this isn’t a do-over, I have to do something. I made the mistake of taking away her emotion. But, turning things up can’t hurt. I can always turn that around if things go sideways, right?”
“You don’t, you know,” she says. “Have to do anything. You could just… leave people alone.”
Ouch.
“Steph—”
“You’re not just playing with emotions, Alex,” she snaps. “You’re playing with people’s lives.”
After a long moment looking at me, she walks ahead of me down the path back toward town, the Mayor’s house sitting atop the hill just behind it. I watch her go, wondering what kind of monster she must think I am. Playing with people’s lives?
“Steph—”
“Let’s go get those pistons and figure out how we’re gonna get your ass in front of Jonah.”
I cringe.
“Please don’t say that again.”
“Regretted it as soon as I said it.”
8: The House
If Owen’s trailer is an average Barbazalian home, Mayor Biggs’ rancher, which looked so small from the middle of the town square, is a palace.
I didn’t realize it from where we were standing earlier by the statue, but the two double front doors are white just like the rest of the house, so we couldn’t see just how tall they were.
And they’re tall.
“Holy shit,” marvels Steph. “Mayor Biggs is loaded.”
“I mean, he’s the mayor.”
“He’s the mayor of Barbazal,” she scoffs. “No offense to this place, but they don’t exactly scream that they’re rolling in dough. How’s this guy getting paid so much?”
“Taxes?” I shrug. She shrugs in return, and we both turn back to the door.
“Think we should knock again?”
“I don’t know,” I reply. “I wasn’t counting.”
“You count when you knock on someone’s door?”
I feel my cheeks grow hot at how weird she clearly thinks that is.
“Uh… I mean, in my head?”
Her mouth curves into a smile, and any lingering tension from our conversation dissolves like sugar in water.
“You’re pretty cute, Alex Chen.”
And just as she’s about to step forward, fist raised, to rap at the door again, saying, “One—” the huge white door flies open inward and Steph jumps back to attention next to me.
A tiny round face emerges in the doorway, a pointed chin, a button nose, long dark hair twisted into a messy braid over the shoulder, and big—huge, in fact—green eyes.
“Can I help you?” she asks, her voice soft, sweet, and… drawl-y?
“Um,” I begin, surprised to hear the crack in my voice, “Hi. I’m Alex, and this is my friend Steph.”
From the corner of my eye, I see Steph shoot me a look, but I can’t make out the details in her face. I know I’ve said something off.
“Can we come in?” I ask.
“Opal,” she says, pulling the door open further and stepping into the light. She folds her arms across her chest, her V-neck dark green sundress revealing just enough cleavage for me to have to physically concentrate on keeping my eyes on hers, but not so much that it wouldn’t be church-worthy. “And that depends. Who is ‘we’?”
“We’re from out of town,” I explain. Eyes on her eyes. Eyes on her eyes. Eyes on her eyes. “O-our car broke down a few miles down the road and we ran into your dad… Mayor Biggs?”
To my surprise and disappointment, she rolls her eyes.
“I’ve heard that one before. My daddy doesn’t go outside of town, and we don’t talk to paparazzi—”
She steps back into the house and just before she can shut the door, Steph reaches her hand forward to stop it.
Wham!
The girl gasps, and I guess I do too, because my hands fly to my mouth in shock as Steph fights for us.
For me.
“We didn’t run into your dad on the road,” she explains. “We ran into Silas, who took us to Elias, who told us to find Jude, who essentially kicked us out of the hotel, which is when we found Owen, who recommended we eat at Plate and Skate, which is where we met Anita, and while we were out for a walk this morning by the statue of Augustus Jeremiah Oscar Rhett Barbazal the second, we ran into your father, Mayor Biggs. That enough of an alibi for you? We’re not paparazzi. We’re stranded musicians looking everywhere in this town for some goddamn help and maybe a chance to talk to Jonah about the water crisis so we can help you all!”
My heart is thundering in my chest. What the hell are you doing, Steph?
This could be our only chance to get some help with the car, and get some intel on Jonah. And she’s ruining it!
Her mouth is going to get us banished from Barbazal altogether.
But then I remember what Mayor Biggs said to us back at the statue. Or, what Steph repeated that Mayor Biggs said. I was too busy at the time combing through his memories…
“Your dad,” I offer, “said to ask for… Clover? He said she might be able to help us with our Saturn? Since she also has one?”
Opal’s one green eye that I can see through the crack in the door widens, blinks a couple of times, looks from me to Steph, and then from Steph to me, and then softens its gaze.
“Well, why didn’t y’all say anything in the first place? Daddy never mentions the Saturn, he’s so damned ashamed of that piece of shit.”
She swings open the door and welcomes us into the foyer, which is the size of Owen’s whole trailer. I instinctively, politely, reach down and remove my sneakers, setting them neatly to the side as I try not to trip over myself while gawking at the deer-antler chandelier over us. What if that thing falls? How are the light bulbs wired through them if they’re real? Are they taxidermized? Did Mayor Biggs hunt and kill those deer himself, or is this one of those synthetic five-thousand-dollar pieces of “art” that’s been so overly processed you can’t even tell if it once grew on an animal?
“Y’all drink sweet tea?” comes Opal’s sing-song voice from the next room over.
* * *
Soon, we’re sitting on huge plush sofa cushions, our socked feet kicked up onto leather ottomans—I don’t have to wonder if they’re real. This whole room smells of leather and wood polish, in the best way. It smells like an old library, or a cozy little bookstore that’s ancient as it is beautiful, meticulously maintained. I look down at my glass of sweet tea and realize even as I sip it down, it doesn’t feel like it’s getting much lighter—that’s just how heavy the glass is.
Everything in this house is unaffordable for me.
“Now,” begins Opal. She sits across from us in a leather lounge chair, legs folded up to one side underneath her, her green floral dress falling over the edge of the chair. That dark braid sits over her shoulder just so. Every tendril looks like it was put there on purpose. Is this how rich people look just lounging around their house? Social media-worthy all the time? “Where’d you say y’all were from?”
She takes a sip of her sweet tea while Steph answers.
“Uh,” she begins. I know exactly what her struggle is. That “Where are you from?” could be asking a million things. My mind cycles back through all the foster homes and centers I went through. Okay, maybe not every single one, because there were a lot, but several come to mind.
And whenever anyone used to ask me, “Where are you from?” for a while I’d answer with Portland, Oregon. Then when I moved to foster home number two, I realized the caretakers were asking me which center I was from, not where I was born and raised and called home, or even the age-old “Where are you really from?”
They didn’t care about any of that.
Helping Hands Group Home, I’d answer. Great, they’d say, confident in their choice to classify me as a promising addition, a charity case, or a lost cause. Or two of those, or all three.
Either way, I was another mouth to feed.
“Haven Springs,” finishes Steph. And those two words pull me out of the spiral session I definitely didn’t welcome and definitely didn’t want to continue.
“Yup, Haven Springs,” I echo, saying it aloud and helping my anxiety even more.
Opal looks from me to Steph, and back to me, her green eyes piercing and studying. But then her mouth curves into a smile.
“My sister Clover likes to visit Haven Springs. Says they have the most darling little flower shop there.”
I smile inside, warmth radiating through me at the memory of Eleanor and Riley.
“Yeah,” I smile, “yeah, they do.”
“So, you drove up here to Barbazal?” she asks. “What for?” And she takes another sip.
This time I step in.
“We were supposed to be passing through to Fort Collins—”
Opal rolls her eyes at that, which makes me pause. What is it about Fort Collins that has her so irritated?
“Oh, it’s nothing,” she quickly recovers, holding out a hand in midair between us for reassurance, as if she would rest her hand on my knee if I were sitting closer. “It’s not you, it’s just that everyone’s just passing through. S’what cost Barbazal all its tourist attractions.”
“Tourist attractions?” Steph asks, the skepticism in her voice unmistakable. “Like what?”
I’m sure I can guess what Steph is thinking. Hayrides. Petting zoo. Corn maze. Maybe a community garden in the spring or a watering hole to swim in in the summer?
Opal must clock Steph’s tone, because she lowers the glass from her lips before she’s taken another sip, and stares at Steph, studying her.
“Theme park,” she says, relishing our responses, which are, of course, audible gasps.
“You had a theme park here?” asks Steph, and then, probably to cushion against an accusation of being super gullible, “Was it a real theme park?”
“Real as the nose on my face,” she beams, “Daddy used to take us all there. Used to be a lake park and all, with a water slide and everything.”
She finishes the sentence, but the way she delivered that last word didn’t sound like she was finished. It sounded like there was more she wanted to say. Much, much more.
“What happened to it?” I ask.
She blows a raspberry and sets her drink down on the huge metal side table next to her chair—seriously, how heavy is that thing?—and pulls her legs to the other side of her, leaning on the arm of the chair and sighing again as she prepares to jump head-first into… something.
“Like everything else around here,” she hisses, “it dried up. The water first, and then all the tourism. People stopped comin’, and so we stopped goin’. My family used to be there every Saturday morning at eight o’clock like… well… clockwork. Until we just… weren’t. I was only six then. I’d been a few times, but every Saturday I’d ask Daddy to let me jump off the high-dive. I used to look up at that thing every time and wonder what it would feel like if I could jump and, for a moment, feel like I was flyin’.”
Opal’s staring at the wall behind Steph and me, and I follow her gaze up to a family photo of Mayor Biggs sitting in the very armchair in which Opal now lounges, a tall, blonde woman standing behind him who I can only assume is his wife, Wisteria, and all twelve of their little girls, gathered around their parents and sitting on the ground in front of them, all in beautiful little Sunday dresses, maybe even Easter, since all of the hair in the picture looks professionally curled.
