10 Periodical Cicadas – Chapter 10

"Please tell me what you think about this!" Noah says with a very Noah grin before handing me a large white envelope.

In a lone corner of the school.

Away from anyone.

Away from [Audrey].

Is this legal? Can Noah and Audrey be apart from one another? Does this make [me] responsible for minding Noah?

I don't want to be responsible for minding Noah. That sounds like the kind of thing that ends up with a Biblical swarm blacking out the sun and throwing Lakewood into a shadow as deep as that of my despair.

Also, and this is just a marginally less likely scenario, I don't want to have to murder him while the two of us are in an isolated place, all by ourselves, and he's trying to give me what I very much hope is not a love letter.

"Well? Open it!" he says with a wide, hopeful smile that does [nothing] to calm my fears.

Oh, look at that, despite my recent bi-panic attacks, despite being dragged away from everybody and everything I've ever known just to be thrown into a real-life horror movie, I can still get on the verge of an anxiety attack due to normal girl stuff, such as a guy with piercing blue eyes smiling at me while the rays of the sun coming from the high windows of the school stairs behind him make his hazel-brown hair light up in all the wrong ways for said guy being Noah.

[Noah].

Look, there are plenty of reasons to reject Noah, not the least of them being that I'm pretty sure that, powers or not, Audrey would use my skull as an ashtray (and, even worse, start smoking) if I didn't handle this situation with more tact than I've been known to possess.

Also, she'd probably use my skin to make herself some snug leather pants. She has often remarked how much she wants me to wrap my legs around her, after all.

"Broody? You there? You aren't opening the envelope, Broody; why aren't you opening the envelope?" he says with head-tilted confusion.

"That sounds like you're quoting a skit and expecting me to keep up," I immediately answer, grasping the conversational tangent like a lifeline—assuming I was drowning and still had some will to live.

"Not really? The cadence of it is a bit of a… cliché? Trope? Well, it [could] be a reference, but not to anything in particular, just a comedic setup easily recognizable as such. You know, I always found it fascinating just how many of these little codified pieces of language we employ to signal tone and nuance. You'd think that neurotypicals wouldn't need so many cultural trappings to get their meaning across."

"Neurotypicals?" I ask, for once witnessing what a non-Audrey-smacked Noah can get up to when he launches into one of his rants with nobody to stop him.

See? That's precisely why I don't want to be his minder. It's a job I'm not qualified for.

Not without some anti-Master training.

… Great. And now my brain has juxtaposed Noah's apparent fascination with BDSM gear yesterday with the word 'master.' Why, brain. Why.

"Oh, you know, people who think like other people," he says, airily gesticulating with his right hand as he keeps his threatening envelope pointed at me, because, apparently, Noah knows not to deescalate a threat lest his bluff be called.

"Isn't that… people? In general?" I ask, still waiting for a chance to just run the fuck away from here.

Noah, you're looking at me weirdly. As in, like I'm the weird one.

[You] are looking at [me] like I'm weird.

I've never felt this offended in my life.

"No. People who think like other people are the statistical norm, but we have plenty of counterexamples running around," he says, speaking slowly enough to increase the indignation.

"If you're talking about parahumans—" I say with a warning note.

"I mean, yes, of course, but it's far more mundane. You have your issues that I'm told I shouldn't dig into without first running things by Audrey—"

"Wait, what—"

"—but I don't have any such excuse; I was just born like this. I'm different, always have been, and there are plenty of people like me."

"I very much [doubt it—"]

"Ms. Lang is… not as much help as one could wish for, but in this? In letting me realize that there are people out there who see the world just a little more like I do? Just that was such a [relief], Broody; you don't even know… Well, you [do] know, after all," he says with a sad little smile.

And my blood freezes.

"What do you mean?" I say, remembering a masculine voice garbled electronically, talking to me with sadistic glee that turned into tender compassion.

Noah looks around us, then makes a weird gesture, circling his pointer finger over the proffered envelope.

Then, at my clear incomprehension, he sighs.

And steps closer.

Close enough that piercing blue eyes are right in front of me, the envelope a meager barrier between his chest and my breasts as he leans forward, closer, and closer…

And then his breath caresses my ear as he whispers:

"Is anybody around us?"

I want to push him away.

I want to scream, to get him to leave my space.

I want him to stay right where he is and not flinch away from me.

So I just go completely still.

"No. There's nobody around," I say, my breath hitching in my throat, wondering what he's going to say, to [do]…

"Then…" he pulls away, his sad smile getting just a bit brighter without losing any of the things that make my heart speed up in anxiety, fear, anticipation. "The murderer. Me. You. We… We see [something] the others don't see. Not Emma, not Audrey, not Brooke, not Ms. [Lang]. And it's because of that little something inside of us that's just different enough, maybe broken, maybe just… I don't have the right word. Help me out, Broody; you're the one whose mother was a literature professor."

His smile turns wry even as he says something that should be hurtful or at least blunt enough to hurt.

But it comes from him. From the boy with a twisted, broken, different piece of something inside of him.

So I know what he means.

And, this time, it doesn't hurt.

"Other. You mean to say something 'other,'" I tell him.

He looks up toward the ceiling, briefly licking his lips, as if savoring the word.

"Other," he says. Slowly. "Yes. I think I like that. We are just… other."

And then he pushes the envelope once more against me, and I take it.

Then I browse through the sheaf of folded papers inside of it, and I feel my inner monologue slide into a flat, dead tone.

"Printed webpages?" I ask, my outward and inner selves matching perfectly.

And his face lights up.

"The most dangerous bugs in Florida! Red imported fire ants are [everywhere], and you could use them to inflict paralyzing pain on most non-Brutes—"

"All this was about a list of [bugs?"]

"I… I worked hard on that list of bugs?"

"You—you—you just dragged me away from everyone! To a secluded corner! And handed me a sealed envelope!"

"I take your secret identity very seriously—"

"Gah! Boys!"

"What's that supposed to mean—"

"That I should've let Audrey kiss me!"

"[What?!"]

"Uh. I mean. Nothing. You've heard nothing."

"I have [definitely] heard something. Something regarding you and Bicurious [spreading—"]

"She didn't spread anything! My legs were closed!"

"That's not what I meant! And when did you even—it was after I left? You waited till I wasn't there to… to… [you know!"]

"I most definitely do not!"

"I—I went straight to my house to brainstorm ideas for your power! Well, also to update all my notes on the Brandon James case, [because of course], but also the brainstorming thing! I have made you a list of pseudo-Tinker applications of every single bug on that list, and you meanwhile were getting spread—"

"I wasn't! She just told me she could've kissed me if I wasn't, you know, [me!"]

"But you being you is the only reason to kiss you!"

I look at him.

He stops gesticulating wildly and looks back at me.

Both of us are flushed and breathing a bit faster than just a spirited conversation would warrant.

"I don't know if that's flattering or you saying I'm not hot enough to be objectified," I finally say.

"How do you even twist that line into—never mind. Trauma; possibly trigger-related. Okay, it looks like I'm going to have to steal a page from Audrey's book," he says, his brow furrowing in a way that suddenly makes me desperately grasp for a quip to throw right at him.

"Does that mean you're going to make out with Gustavo? Because I'm pretty sure he's open to your advances—"

Piercing blue eyes are staring right at me.

And my throat feels suddenly slightly dryer than advised.

Just, you know, not dry enough that I require someone else to lend me some of their moisture.

"I'm going to ignore that line just to tell you this: you are hot. You walk like you know where you're going, which is objectively one of the most attractive traits that can be conveyed with body language; you are witty and intelligent, well-read, and able to look past the surface and engage with the [person] beneath. You can keep up with me, you can push [me], and you can do so without showing any disgust because you [understand]. You don't have the slightest clue how offensive it is that you think none of that is attractive because what you're saying is that none of the things I value are worth anything."

He's…

He's close.

Not as close as when he whispered his question. Maybe he's farther than when we started talking.

But he feels closer.

"I… None of those things are… Nothing you said is about how I look," I finally point out despite my heart hammering in my chest.

And, this time, Noah looks at me about as baffled as people tend to look at Noah.

"What does how you look have to do with how hot you are?" he finally says.

And I don't know whether to smack his head or kiss him.

…

Stupid bi-panic, it could at least settle for one gender per time period.

"Broody?" the guy who has suddenly, [now], found reason to act embarrassed asks after my silence grows long enough, and I realize that I've been staring right at startlingly blue eyes.

"Yes?" I answer, trying very hard not to reciprocate his feelings—his [feelings of embarrassment.]

"What do you mean about Gustavo being open?" he says, biting his lip in a way that makes me…

…

That makes me sigh at being surrounded by model agency rejects who may have soap opera levels of romantic entanglements.

Seriously, Noah? Your thing with Audrey, telling me you aren't flirting with me 'unless it's working,' and [now] you get your own brand of bi-panic? The murderer missed the genre of this setting.

Thank God. I don't think I could stomach a serial killer based on Days of Our Lives.

***

[Emma]

There's a break between classes right now.

Not that I'm anywhere near Washington High at the moment.

"You didn't have to follow me," Audrey finally says without lifting her mouth from the crossed arms resting on top of her knees, the supple leather muffling her words just slightly more than the cool breeze.

It's the first thing she's said since we got to the pier in the lake, the one nearest to Brooke's house, and she sat down without looking at me.

The other things she had said before were for me to leave her alone, so it's not much of an improvement, but I'll take it over the prolonged silence.

"I did," I finally say with a bit of a shrug.

I'm leaning back, my hands resting behind me on bare, unvarnished wood that feels warm to my touch, the raised lines of the worn grain smooth on my skin despite the lack of any treatment.

In front of me, the green waters of the lake spread toward the hills behind it, the sun sparkling off the cresting ripples with dappled gold.

I know that Noah would be better able to describe it, putting the image into cinematographic terms until it became a still frame in the listener's mind.

I think that Taylor could reference a book with such an image, allowing not the picture but the atmosphere to shine through, to carry out whatever meaning she wanted to see in it.

But I…

I'm Emma. Emma Duval, even if actually Emma James, and I was never good at talking, at making myself heard.

No, my role has always been to listen to others.

Except for the one time when I miserably failed at it.

"Look, I get it," Audrey says, the lower half of her face still buried in her sleeves. "You got pretty. You got invited to where we thought we didn't belong. And you took it. I don't blame you for it."

"I do," I say, letting out a sigh that I maybe don't deserve.

"Emma… I don't care. Really," she says, still not looking at me.

And the urge to let out a second sigh grows.

"Can we talk about the actual issue?" I say, still leaning back.

Still looking at Audrey from behind her.

She's a black shape against green nature, and that's just… her. Being something that doesn't fit what's around her, that doesn't [care] to fit, or even despises it. That will go the extra mile just to tell everyone Audrey Jensen is not like the others.

That she's better is the implicit message.

"The actual issue?" she says with a bit of a chuckle.

"That I didn't realize I was in love with you," I say. Nonchalantly. Easily. Naturally.

Lying.

Because there's something burning in my throat, and I'm digging my nails into the soft crevices between raised lines of harder wood. Because my heart feels like somebody is squeezing it, and I'm about to cry.

But this isn't about me. This isn't about me talking.

It's about me listening.

So I do my best so that Audrey will talk.

She's gone completely still, and I can only see her left hand squeezing her right arm until her fingers go a yellowish white.

"What?" she finally says with a voice that is utterly Audrey with all the fury and rage lurking just under the surface.

Good.

"I loved you. I still do, even if… Even if maybe not in the same way because I just broke up with Will, I now realize I care for you more than I ever cared for him. And it's unfair of me to tell you now, but I think it would be even worse if you didn't—"

"How [dare you]," she says, turning toward me with blazing fury in her green-blue eyes.

Such a startling combination of colors…

"It's the truth," I say, managing to shrug without having to dislodge my nails from the weathered wood planks.

"You—no. [No]. You don't get to—you [threw me away]. You ignored me to go build your new white picket fence suburban fantasy with those vapid friends of yours that would never accept me. You [let them torture my girlfriend to death]."

"What—"

Audrey is standing over me.

One foot on each side of my stretched legs, bent down so she can glare straight into my eyes, a hand grabbing my shirt just under my collar.

She's breathing harshly, and her clenched fist trembles by her side.

A part of me wants her to do it. To punch me. To punish me.

The other is reeling.

"Audrey, what are you saying—"

"Rachel! The girl in the video! The first girl I kissed! The second girl I—"

She stops.

Blue-green eyes quiver.

And I reach up to touch her face.

I mar her pale cheek with the grime of old wood under my nails, the texture of outdoor dust between my fingers and her skin.

It doesn't matter.

Not when she doesn't let go. When she still holds my shirt with fury and desperation.

"I am sorry," I say.

She closes her eyes.

"Not your fault. It was Nina, right?" she says, her tone forcefully steady.

So I slide my hand behind her nape and drag her down to me.

She stumbles, falling on her knees, straddling me, her chest mashing against mine and filling me with all kinds of emotions that I don't have the time for because this isn't about me.

It's about the girl I hurt.

The girl I left behind.

The girl I loved.

The girl I still care for, even if I don't know how.

But that's for later.

"I can't even imagine how you feel," I say, my left arm supporting both our weights as my right hand messes with short hair that bristles past my caressing fingers with its own soft, tender touch. "What you've been holding onto."

She doesn't say anything, and I can't look into her eyes to know what she feels because her face is by my side, our cheeks close enough that I feel the warmth coming from her, almost soothing in contrast to my sun-warmed skin.

But I need her to talk if I'm to listen, so I keep saying things, hoping one of them will prompt her into doing whatever she needs to do.

To me. With me. I don't care.

Not now, and maybe not ever.

"It was… Had you known her for long?" I ask.

She shakes her head, the soft hair a long caress on my open palm.

"Did you love her?" I continue.

Another shake.

Shorter.

Almost shuddering.

"And so you feel… guilty? About not feeling worse?"

She goes still.

"It's just not real," she finally says. "She… She's not there. Not anymore, but there's no body, and I keep waiting for her to appear in some twisted painting, or sculpture, or [theatre piece]. I first thought she had run away, and maybe that's it, but… But her parents don't know. [I] don't know. I… Emma, I…"

"Shush," I say right as the hint of tears comes through. "You don't know. She could be… Alive. Did she have any reason to run away?"

"Her parents. They… They are homophobes. And the video…"

My blood runs cold.

But I don't have the right to show it.

Or to talk about trigger events and the [other] possibility for Rachel to disappear right before the murders started.

"Then… Then just… Audrey, I don't want to give you false hope, but… But don't dwell on things you don't—[can't] know about," I say, trying not to grab her, to tightly clutch her hair in a panicked grasp.

"That easy? Is it that easy to put out of your mind a girl you… liked?" she says, slowly pulling back until her blue-green eyes are once more in front of me.

Accusing me.

But not looking away.

"No," I say, slowly shaking my head, feeling the weight of my hair shift behind me as a stronger breeze comes in from the lake. "It isn't. It never was," I say.

She looks at me.

Just looks at me.

And I…

I'm here to listen to her. To do for her what I never should've stopped doing, even if I thought Noah was doing it better than I ever did, even if they had a connection I could've never competed with.

But I'm…

I'm Emma Duval, actually Emma James, and I'm a mess of a human being who's not half as good at the things she wants to be good at as she should be.

And so I wonder, despite myself, despite what I want this to be, what [she] needs it to be…

How different Audrey's lips would feel from Will's.

***

[Miguel Acosta]

"Gustavo? You there?" I ask as I unbuckle my belt and take off the gun dangling from it.

The department is not big enough to afford its own confoam launchers, and, truth be told, I'm grateful for it.

Guns are more reliable, not to mention they have [far] more reach.

"In the kitchen," my surly teenage son who's also a tortured artist says, proving once again that we should not have let him watch all those American soap operas growing up.

Not that [Mexican] soap operas would have been better role models.

Or, God forbid, [Venezuelan] ones.

Suppressing a shudder the likes of which most of my ex-partners would only get after an attack from the Nine, I walk into my sunny kitchen to find my son drawing one of his gory panels, this time around one that depicts the conspicuously absent blonde that should still be living in my home.

"Brooke's not here?" I say as I open the fridge and grab a carton of orange juice.

I should just get some actual oranges, but… convenience.

I'm told widowers tend to resort to convenient things.

"Went back to her house. Her mother came back," he says without lifting his eyes from the thick paper he's told me he needs so that the ink doesn't bloat and his lines remain as thin as he envisions.

I miss having eye contact. Guess that's one of those things that goes away with puberty.

"Her mother? Not her father?" I ask as I grab a seat by his side and pour him a glass of orange juice to match my own.

He grabs it wordlessly and [finally] offers me a smile of thanks, meeting my eyes and making me…

Making me smile back.

And try very hard to suppress the wince I still feel coming out after all these months at the reminder of the other person who had eyes like his.

Brown. Dark brown, so intense it has a tinge of red.

Red like the blood all over her.

"Yeah, the mayor is still on that business trip of his. Weird. He should be hurrying back here, with all that's going on," he says, not quite prodding into an ongoing criminal investigation.

"Yeah, he really, [really] should be here right now. I hope those land deals of his are worth losing the next election," I say, pretending nothing's wrong like I have for almost a year before taking my own sip of juice.

"It's like he hasn't watched Jaws, isn't it?" he says with a hint of the easy smile he used to have.

Before.

So I nod, chuckling at the joke, both because it's a good one and because…

Because it's a joke. From my son.

And he deserves to get all the laughs he's been missing on.

We fall back into a bit of a companionable silence after that as I watch him draw with more interest than I feel.

He's good. Really good.

But I've had a bit too much art for my tastes as of late.

And that brings up another thought. One I've done my best to suppress again and again. One that I don't even want to acknowledge.

But… But if it's true, if…

What would I…

He's my son. My [son].

And I already took his mother from him.

"Hey, I… you know that second-generation capes trigger more… easily, don't you?" I finally say, earning an unimpressed eyebrow at my attempt at being offhand with the remark.

"I do," he says, the red ballpen still in his grasp.

"I… If you ever… With everything that's going on… I just want you to know that I—"

"Dad, if I ever get superpowers, you'll be the first one to know," he says with what should be a light tone.

It isn't.

Not with the way his eyes narrow and his fingers clench around transparent plastic.

Not with the reminder of those other dark brown, reddish eyes. The ones that are no longer there.

The ones from the wife and mother I killed.

I offer him a tired smile and patiently wait for him to go back to drawing his childhood crush with blood dripping down her face.

It's beautiful.

It's beautiful in a way only he and I can appreciate.

And I just hope my newest PRT-issued partner is having an easier time with his own surly teenager.

***

[Brooke]

"Mom?" I ask as I open the door to my house.

She doesn't answer.

I walk in, the home feeling… alien. Hostile.

It's… The last time I was here was the night of the murder. Gustavo and his father immediately took me in, and I've been coddled in my childhood friend's arms for most of my time there.

So I expected my home to feel cold. To feel unwelcoming.

But I didn't expect it to feel threatening.

So I walk in, toward the pool, expecting to find Mom working on her tan like she usually does on a lazy afternoon.

She's not there.

The pool no longer has any traces of the party, the cleaning staff having done their job, but…

But it still feels like it was just minutes ago. That I left behind a rowdy group of drunk teens to go scold the [other] drunk teens desecrating my sofa with copious fluids, and…

And then I got a message on my phone, and I followed it to a bright light deep in the forest behind my house.

My hand's in my pocket, clutching the rectangle of metal and glass, and the world swirls around me, hitting me with the cool of the air over the pool's water, my head feeling lighter and lighter until I have to kneel down on the brown sand-cement lining the edge of the pool, my thin capris letting me feel the texture of the small pebbles embedded in it as I lean over the edge until my hair falls forward and into the water as I keep looking at the panicked blonde reflected on it, looking back at me with wide eyes, the water distorting the home behind me until it looks like masked silhouettes surround me.

I… I am drowning.

I have to breathe quickly, but that is not enough, and so I breathe faster until my eyes go dark, until the silhouettes become black shadows moving over the small waves, reaching toward me even as I bend forward, deeper and deeper, my hair a floating mass of dirty blond that looks about to strangle me, to tangle around my neck and drag me down, and down, and down.

Then my forehead touches the cold water, and I…

I jerk up and fall on my side.

I'm clutching my knees, the rough sand finish digging into my bare arms, my wet hair still inside the pool as I try to force myself to breathe slower.

To just…

To stop.

Stop drowning myself in panic. In self-inflicted horror.

In the fear of my own empty house.

I look over the treeline at the sun sinking behind dark, indistinct shapes as I struggle to maintain my own breathing until my head stops feeling fuzzy and my eyes can see the green of the pines growing past my pool.

Gustavo and I played in those woods when we were kids.

And that's the thought that calms me.

Because I found Seth in there, dead and surrounded by his exposed crimes.

But I've also grown in here.

I've made memories here.

And, alone or not, this is my [home].

So I take another moment to just… to just let the air in and out. To feel myself go back to being me.

And then I stand up, take off my top, my capris, my sneakers, my underwear.

And jump into the cold, welcoming water, my hands breaking the surface so I can dive into blue depths and leave behind a trail of glimmering bubbles.

Because I'm me.

And fuck anybody who thinks they can take that away.

===================

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