scorch the earth about them just under the surface, a seething they didn't know what to do with; once the veneer was scratched it erupted.
Iz appealed to Tristan's better nature, preaching about finding better ways to respond to hostile situations rather than let them control her. 'Blessed are the peacemakers' was a luxury Iz could indulge, but there was a reality she didn't understand: not everyone played by the rules of peace and some people just needed to be knocked on their ass. Folks who believed others infringed onto what was theirs and what the world owed them. Otherwise the world walked over you, the way so many had abused Iz. People like Iz needed people like Tristan.
Moving her weight to her back foot, Tristan knew how to throw a punch. She struck with her shoulder, not her arm. She pivoted her hip into her blow, punching through her target. The jab flew with an angry whisper, not wasting any more time with idle talk or the pantomime of threat. She wasn't one to waste a shot. Andret's neck snapped back, nose exploding on impact. At heart, Tristan was a fighter. The other thing about fighting was knowing how to take a punch. Tristan loved going up against people who sparred against heavy bags or practiced shadow boxing, because no matter how exquisite their technique, a fight was won or lost based on how well they handled having their bell rung. Andret fell into the arms of her compatriots, the group piling onto the floor. Students crowded around them as Tristan loomed over them. She read their eyes: they wanted no part of her.
'You OK?' Tristan asked Iz. Whenever they were together, the rest of the world retreated.
'I'm a full-time student, so I got to lay it off.' As a kid, she wanted to study math. She had a head for numbers and loved their patterns and symmetry. Numbers measured the world. Unfortunately, the path of education was discouraged by her father. As far as he was concerned, she was an incubator on legs: he regularly informed her that her duty was to get married and have kids. As her brand of rebellion, she became studious and intense and developed a love of reading.
'You takin' notes?'
'Right here.'
'All right then.' Tristan took her in her arms and kissed her lightly on the forehead.
'What's going on here?' A teacher popped his head out of his classroom.
'Nothing,' Tristan said.
'You know her?' He glanced at Andret, who cradled her face and slinked off with her friends.
'I don't know anyone.'
'Go to the office, young lady.'
'I don't even go to this school.' Tristan flipped her hood over her head, turned on her heel, and flashed two fingers. 'Deuces.'
Before the teacher could summon security, Tristan was gone.
King couldn't afford to be sensitive. He lived in a hard world, a dangerous world. Pastor Winburn called it a fallen world. Fallen into what King was never sure. A state of disrepair, an invisible 'unfinished business' sign lodged on someone's to-do list when they… He… got around to remembering the people left behind. Much like the church he used as a meeting place.
Out of habit, King grabbed a nearby broom and King swept the floor of the abandoned, burned-out husk of a church, keenly aware of the futile gesture. Vandals would one day break in and loot anything the owners missed. Crackheads would use it as a safe haven from the elements to get high. Prostitutes would throw discarded mattresses in the corners and use it as a flophouse for their johns. But King straightened up anyway because he had to do something, no matter how small or ultimately futile.
'You appear haggard and worn.' Merle sat, legs crossed over one another at the ankles. Black cracks veined the surface of the circular table, browned with rain rot.
'Not enough sleep.'
'You wear your dreams.'
'Something like that.'
'Hmm.' Merle ran his finger along the top of the makeshift table. He licked the soot from his fingertip. 'I won't always be with you.'
'You dying?' King stopped sweeping and focused on the man for the first time.
'We're all dying. I know my death will be shameful and ridiculous. If you find my remains and I'm in a closet with a belt tied around my neck, wrists, and my gentleman's gentleman… all I ask is that you cut me down at least.'
'So you are dying?'
'My safety word is 'apples.''
'What are you talking about?'
'You have to be prepared. Events are in motion, some courses set, but we are not Destiny's concubine. We have decisions to make. Choices.'
King trusted few people. Yet from the beginning, he knew he could talk to Merle. Perhaps it was just that with his brand of lunacy, anything King said would be forgotten moments later. More in truth, King sensed there was something ancient about their bond. 'Can I get your advice on something?'
'Most people don't want advice, only agreement.'
'I want your honest opinion.'
'I know nothing but half-truths and veiled interpretations, but I'll do my best.'
'What do you think of Lady G?'
Merle tapped his lip with his sooty forefinger. 'If I should tell you she was a poor choice, young, foolish, and empty-headed, would you believe me?'
'She's not even close to that.' King's pulse quickened, as if his heart reared at a threat to be confronted. Something about Lady G stirred an over-protectiveness within him, as if he couldn't stand even the thought of anyone speaking ill of her. 'That's not the woman I know.'
'A grown man fixed by a girl.' Merle etched his finger into the table, drawing pictures only his mind envisioned. 'What if the girl was not a girl?'
'A monster? An enchantment?' King's mind raced with possibilities. Anything to explain the… hesitation he felt with her.
'No. A plug.'
'What?'
'She stops up the hole in you.' Merle adjusted the fit of his cap as if tuning in the proper signal. 'Somewhere between birth and burial, people learned to twist the simple longings in their hearts — rest, belonging, affection, validation, peace — and tried to fill them with other things. Food. Drugs. Sex. Yet try as they might, the hole remained.'
'Try again.'
'I see that's too much for you to get your mind around, O Hesistant Spirit. Let's try this more practically then. What if I was to say she would betray you for another, perhaps one of your closest; would you believe me?'
'I'd say you were way off. She's not that type of girl, Merle.'
Merle threw his head back and began to sing. 'When a man loves a woman…'
'I haven't said anything about love.'
'Here's the thing about love,' Merle continued, ignoring him. 'It goes against the laws governing the universe. Laws of probability. Laws of nature. Laws of common sense. None of them need apply. Love trumps all.'
'It all comes down to the right girl.'
'The future is like love: something we don't have the luxury to believe in,' Merle sniffed. 'I need to attend to the others.'
Little more than a fallen museum, a curator preserving theologies no longer relevant to the community it served, a layer of dust settled upon the church like a burial shroud. Three chairs presided on a raised platform behind a toppled altar. Promises of health and wealth reverberated in the empty anteroom, echoing only along the cobwebs strung between the chairs. The choir loft cracked under its own weight, a broken bow on the ship of the church stage; an abandoned stage whose dwindling audience found better speakers, better empty promises, or greener pastures to lose themselves in.
His steps pronounced and precise, a boy entered with the solemnity of a wedding's ring-bearer. Except instead of a ring, he carried a white gun — with a pearl handle grip and white shaft — rested atop a purple pillow. With each footfall, flames erupted from candle stands. Two boys, both with the scrawny physique of angry twigs,
