Rot & Ruin

“Actually, I can. And I lock my bedroom door,” Tom said over his shoulder as he knelt down by the ancient black canvas bag in which he kept his equipment. He removed three battered but serviceable bokken. “I figured you’d learn better in a class setting. You know… with your friends.”

Benny looked at his friends. Nix was staring acid death at him. Morgie had his hands cupped around his groin, pretending to scream in pain. Chong smiled thinly at him and drew a finger slowly across his throat.

“‘Friends’?” Benny echoed.

Three hours later the four of them stood on trembling legs. Sweat poured down their bodies. Their clothes were pasted to them, their hair hung in rat tails on their foreheads and the backs of their necks. Morgie could barely lift his wooden sword. Chong’s face had lost its smile a while back. Benny was wondering if it was okay to wish for a coronary. Only Nix looked relatively alert. She was as flushed and sweaty as the others, but her hands didn’t tremble as she raised her sword for the last drill.

Tom looked like he just got up from a long nap in a hammock under a shady tree.

“Okay,” Tom said. “Pair up. We’ll run through the same attack and defense we just did, but let’s see if we can take it up a notch. Don’t really try to hit one another, but make the attacks as real as you can safely manage.”

Morgie pushed Chong out of the line, and they settled into stances. Chong was only slightly better than Morgie. He was faster, but Morgie was light on his feet for a stocky kid; he was at least twice as strong as Chong.

That left Nix and Benny as partners. Benny had avoided this all afternoon, but Nix seemed to find the pair-up faintly amusing. They squared off, raising their swords in the ritual salute and settling into their stances.

Tom called, “Hajime!” (Japanese for “Begin!”), and Benny lunged forward to deliver his attack. Nix slapped his sword aside and rapped him hard on the head. Benny saw stars.

“No,” said Tom. “We’re trying not to make contact.”

“Oh,” said Nix distractedly. “Right.”

22

NIX AND BENNY SWUNG AND BLOCKED, STABBED AND EVADED AS THE afternoon sun baked their skin and boiled the sweat from their pores. When Tom finally found a sliver of compassion and ended the session, they dropped where they stood. Morgie lay like a beached starfish, arms and legs spread wide, mouth open. Chong crawled under the picnic table, curled into a fetal position, and appeared to pass out. Benny limped to the oak tree whose thick trunk anchored the whole yard, slid down with a thump, kicked off his shoes, and gasped like a trout.

“Here,” Nix said, and Benny pried one eye open to see her standing there with two tall glasses of cold water. She held one out to him.

Benny hesitated.

“It’s not poisoned,” she said, “and I didn’t spit in it.”

“Thanks.” He took the glass and drank half of it, then looked up again. Nix was still standing there. “Have a seat.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Sit down before you fall down.”

She lowered herself to the grass and sat cross-legged in the shade. Tom was in the house. The yard was still. Even the birds in the trees were too overheated to sing. There was a faint rumble of thunder way off to the west, but if there was a storm coming, then the clouds were still on the far side of the mountains.

They drank their water. Benny waved a fly away. The moment stretched.

“I’m sorry,” they both said at the same time. They blinked at each other, and they almost smiled.

“You first.” Again, both of them said it at the same moment.

Nix held up a hand. “Me first,” she said, but then she took a few seconds to get the words out. “Look… I’m sorry for being such a girl.”

“No-”

“Let me get it out,” she interrupted, “or I won’t be able to say it.”

“But-”

“Please.”

Benny gave in, nodded. Nix flicked a glance across the yard to where Morgie lay, apparently dead.

But when she spoke she didn’t say what Benny expected. “Morgie told me about the card you found. The Lost Girl. He said that the second you looked at it, there were little red hearts floating in the air around your head.”

“Morgie’s an idiot.” He said it as a joke, but in truth he wanted to go over and beat Morgie to death for opening his big, dumb mouth. Especially since the Lost Girl card was lying under his pillow at the moment, and he’d planned to leave it there when he went to bed tonight. His face was wet hot. He hoped she would think that it was still the postexercise flush, but he knew she was way too smart for that.

“Maybe,” she said, “but is he wrong?”

“How could anyone fall in love with someone on a Zombie Card?” he said with a laugh, but he was at least a full second late in getting the answer out, and he knew it.

“So… you’re not in love?” she said offhand, but Benny was already waiting for a snare, and he knew that this was it. That question had as much to do with Zombie Cards as their school textbooks on American history had to do with the world in which they lived. That question was a twisted path filled with thorns and bear traps, and he knew it.

Benny knew that he wasn’t the smartest of his friends, and when it came to perception he wasn’t usually the sharpest knife in the drawer. But he was a long way from stupid. He knew what was happening, and he knew that allowing it to go down that path would only do harm. Nix wanted him to say something about emotions, about love. She wanted him to open a door that would lead to a conversation that would really do neither of them any good. It was too soon to talk about why he hadn’t taken her hand; too soon to talk about what he really felt about her or if he felt anything at all. He didn’t know the answers to those questions himself, and he was afraid of what his mouth would say.

So, he turned to her and instead of saying anything, he simply looked at her. And let her look at him.

Heat lightning forked the sky above them.

“What?” she snapped, and then she heard the shrill sound of her own voice and the need threaded through it. Benny could see the awareness blossom in her eyes, and it was a shared experience, because she knew that he saw it. It was a sobering moment, and in a bizarre way Benny felt like it aged him. Matured him. Just a bit. Nix too; he was certain of it. Her green eyes lost some of their force, and her mouth softened for a second, as if her lips were going to tremble, and then her jaw tightened as she clamped her self-control into place. In an odd, distracted way Benny admired that. He loved that about her.

They sat there for a long time, their eyes shifting away and coming back, their mouths wanting to speak but uncertain what language was spoken in this strange new country.

“I-,” he began, but again she cut him off.

“So help me God, Benny, if you say ‘I’m sorry,’ I’ll kill you.”

She meant it. Even her freckles seemed to glow with dangerous heat. But at the end of her anger, there was the whisper of a smile that lifted the corners of her lips. Benny wished right then that things were different for them, that they had been given the chance to meet at this age rather than growing up together. It would make so many things easier.

He cleared his throat. “So… where does that leave us, Nix?”

“Where do you want it to leave us?”

“I want us to be friends. Always.”

“And are we friends?”

“You’re one of my best friends. You and Chong-you’re my family.”

“Me and Chong? What about Morgie?”

Benny shrugged. “He’s the family dog.”