Page 43 of Bent Heavens

“You’re supposed to be behind me in this. We’re supposed to be together.”

“We are together.” She said it but couldn’t make herself believe it.

“Then you shouldn’t have to ask why I call it Subject A, Liv! Of course I call it Subject A. We have to be ready for that possibility. We have to know what works on Subject A to know what’ll work on Subject B and Subject C and Subject D and Subject E.”

“This isn’t a prison, Doug.”

“Yeah, Liv, it is. Some places have always been prisons and always will be. Like high school? Like Bloughton? But right here, this shed, is where we rearrange all of it. This is a prison we run. This is where we’re in control. I read you those military memos! Weren’t you listening?”

The Armory was silent but for a bug suiciding against a bulb. Liv did not speak, did not move. This boy looked like Doug. The long black hair, thick as carpet. The vulpine cheeks, the bulging arms. But was he still the Doug Monk she knew? And her, down here on the floor, was she still Liv Fleming? Or had the things that had gone on in this shed changed them as deeply as if on a molecular level?

“I just want to stay on track,” Doug said. “There’s a lot coming up to look forward to. I’m just barely into the army manuals. I’m going to try Fear Up Mild this week and then Fear Up Harsh next week. I can’t do them alone. It takes two agents to play the roles. We’ll get all the way to Shock and Awe, I promise, but I can’t do it alone. Okay?”

“What,” she asked, her voice trembling, “are you trying to accomplish?”

The appalled, betrayed look Doug gave her was like the forward-slanted blades of Hard Passage, digging into her flesh the second she tried to back her way out of the trap. She could feel her skin pull and tear. Her next words came out from a voice not only trembling, but falling apart, a crumble of octaves and inflections.

“Why don’t you just…” She swallowed and it hurt. “Doug, why don’t you just kill it?”

His eyes flooded red with anger, but also tears.

“That’s not what Lee meant when he said, You know what to do,” he said in quiet disbelief. “That’s not justice. That’s not revenge.”

Liv turned away and dug into the first aid kit. She pulled on the gardening gloves with shaking hands and reached into the skinner’s mouth to extract the blood-hardened gauze. She saw Doug’s shadow slip away, heard the scuffle of his shoes, listened to the purr of paper as he readjusted his grip on Resurrection Update. His steps to the entrance were slow, as if the book’s 280 pages weighed a pound each. The door creaked open. Liv pressed her eyes shut.

“You know what I think?” His voice was as soft as the misting rain. “I think you’ve been right all along. Maybe there’s other skinners out there. Maybe there’s not. But what A can do, what A can definitely do, is change everyone’s minds about Lee. You’re right—that’s what we owe your dad. And I don’t think it’s too late to make that happen, you know? And in a way where someone can’t just see A and suddenly haul it away like it never existed.”

Liv opened her eyes. The skinner’s blinkless orbs were fixed upon Doug, and so she looked that way, too; it seemed important to see what A saw. Doug was paused at the threshold, his face tilted into the drizzle. The shed’s blazing bulbs slid like liquid fire from his back as he exited. A silver sheet of rain rippled, and a gust of wind began to close the shed door behind him. Liv was frightened by his silent exit, yet did not pause. She stuffed her hand into her pocket and yanked out the bottle of pills.

20.

Being at school with kids whose biggest problems were sorting through crushes and achieving arbitrary academic objectives was difficult to comprehend. When Liv got to school Friday morning, she got out of her car and stared at her warped reflection in the door for twenty minutes to avoid going inside. But when the day’s final bell rang, she found herself equally reluctant to go home and confront Doug. She tried wandering the halls, but they were a minefield: Monica over here, Coach Carney over there.

Liv made her way to a lower floor. The auditorium, to her surprise, seemed the safest place—there she could sink into the black sea of seats. All she had to do was control her temper about the play being rehearsed. She settled in, halfway back, hoping no one saw her. A few did, of course, and word was passed actor to actor, creating a heightened electricity. Liv recalled from opening nights past her dad saying that a few nerves weren’t a bad thing for acting.

It seemed true. As if trying to prove something to Liv, the cast appeared to shift to a higher energy level. The first couple of scenes were hard for Liv. The actors danced through choreography ignorant of the blood they tracked around the stage. They belted songs without recognition of the people haunted by those melodies. It had to be comforting, Liv thought, to know the precise parameters of your three-walled world, to know exactly what words to say, when to enter, when to exit, when to laugh, when to die.

It amazed her how quickly her trauma receded. Perhaps she needed a diversion, and, given one, she attached herself to it with claws and teeth. Bruno had insisted that the drama geeks were “not bad people,” and no matter how hard she looked, she saw no indication that he was wrong. The girl who played Oliver was decent, despite the dull, angelic role. The kid playing Fagin, however, was amazing, bounding over props, flipping his cane like a twirler’s baton, and behaving as if herding pickpockets was the funnest thing ever. Liv recognized this kid from classes—a quiet notebook scribbler—and never would have thought he had it in him.

Bruno Mayorga was the best of them all. His lanky frame was extended by a stupendous top hat, which he rolled up his arm with a magician’s dexterity until the hat broke in half. He spoke dialogue as if it were a rope holding him back. Words were irrelevant; everything was conveyed through his agile tone and body language, the manipulation of his big eyes and expressive mouth. Liv could read them from a mile away.

Baldwin’s gaze was warier, and Liv understood. These were her kids, and she had to protect them. When rehearsal was through, the cast and crew filtered into the auditorium, lingering to gab. Bruno, as usual, made no effort to conceal his interest in Liv. He took the stage steps by twos and ambled up to her. He was in casual clothes, as they all were, but still carried his collapsed top hat.

“I think Baldwin’s braced for a bomb. Where’d you put it?”

“You were good.” It came out before she could stop it. “I mean, everything was good.”

Bruno looked touched. “Aw. I didn’t expect you to say that.”

Since becoming A’s nurse, she’d developed some expertise at evaluating bodies, and what joyful respite there was in observing one that worked as perfectly as Bruno’s. His body needed nothing from her—no antiseptic, no medical tape, no painkillers. She longed to place both hands on his chest, feel how his heart beat evenly, how his lungs breathed steadily, how his ribs rose and fell beneath the skin, where ribs ought to be. She pictured herself doing it and leaned forward.

With that small arch of her back, everything became as simple as if they’d rehearsed this scene a thousand times. The subsequent exchange didn’t feel canned, but rather exciting, each word of dialogue in its proper place.

“What are you doing now?” she asked.

He held up his busted top hat.

“The costume room,” he said. “Need a new chapeau.”