A Handful of Dust (Summer, Part Two)
OOC Notice: Also not suitable for small children, though not by as much as the first part.
Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. - T.S. Eliot
Chapter Three: The Fork
“Shut up,” said the other guy, and before Joanie could react further, he turned and pointed the gun at her. She instinctively raised a hand, but to her surprise, the guy with the gun became suddenly, unnaturally still, as though he had been paralyzed from the chin down.
“I told you,” gasped John, now sitting on the ground. If one ignored all the blood on the lower part of his shirt and upper part of his trousers, it looked almost like something he might have done on purpose. “To go. Away.”
The guy’s eyes – the only bit of him that seemed able to move – widened in terror, and then he flew. There was another explosion of gunfire, but Joanie heard metal on metal – a ricochet – just before he slammed into the windscreen of a car parked on the other side of the street. The other guy ran forward, but abruptly, his feet shot out from under him and he landed, hard, on his back. John said something in what sounded like Latin – Joanie didn’t recognize the specific word – just as the guy, perhaps thinking or perhaps just desperate, struck out with his foot. Light flashed and the guy went limp just as his foot made contact with John, who cried out in pain.
Joanie forced her feet to move. She did not have time to go into shock. “John,” she said as she hurried to her friend, kneeling beside him and pushing his hand out of the way in an attempt to get a look at the damage. Never, she thought, had her Girl Guide First Aid badges felt less valuable than they did right now….
“You need to go,” said John.
“What?” asked Joanie.
“You need to get out of here,” mumbled John. “There’s going to be…trouble. You need to go.”
“I’m not going to leave you bleeding out in the street,” said Joanie. A car door slammed and Joanie’s head whipped around, but relief flooded her at the approach of a familiar face.
“Rafe?” she gasped, standing up again. Rafe was a friend of theirs, a member of their childhood homeschool book club, and just as importantly, someone they knew who had a car and had it with him. “Thank God. Help me – W - what are you doing?!”
This exclamation was, Joanie thought, warranted, as Rafe’s action on reaching them was to grab Joanie and push her behind him. She almost put him on the ground out of sheer reflex. She tried to get back around him and realized he was looking at John as though he had never seen him before.
“What the hell?” she asked.
“That’s my question,” said Rafe, sounding panicked. “What did – what did you do;, man?”
This seemed to be directed to John. “Got shot,” muttered John.
“I meant with the – the lights and throwing gang-bangers across the road! That was – that was some kind of X-Men stuff there! What are you?”
“Rafe – " said Joanie.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” said John.
“I know I saw all that! You stay away from us!” Then “Joanie, what are you doing?”
Rafe’s change of pace was as warranted as Joanie’s had been a moment earlier. While he had been panicking, Joanie, her hands now shaking with adrenalin, had picked up a dropped gun and pointed it at the boy she’d made out with while drunk not three weeks past.
“Shut up, Rafe,” said Joanie. “And help John up.”
* * * * * * * *
“This is messed up,” muttered Rafe, driving, five minutes later. He and John had both protested vociferously, but one of them had been nearly fainting from blood loss already and the other had had a gun pointed at his head on a night when he wasn't feeling lucky. Between their respective weaknesses, they had had no choice but to accept Joanie’s way of doing things.
John moaned as the car hit an uneven patch of road. “You’ve got to – go away, Joanie,” he added.
“Both of you be quiet and let me think,” snapped Joanie from where she sat in the center of the backseat.
“What is there to think about?” asked Rafe. “We stop right now, we can still call the cops, or just dump him somewhere – “
“The blood all over your car now will be pretty hard for you to explain if we do,” said Joanie. “Not to mention the gun in my hand.”
“Yeah, I figure they’re going to have some questions about that at the hospital when I tell them I was kidnapped,” snapped Rafe. “Not as many as they’re gonna have about Magneto here, but you know, it’ll be the people doing the autopsy who ask about him, not the cops so much….”
John began muttering in Latin. It sounded like the Confiteor. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Joanie actually swayed in her seat as she realized something.
“We can’t go to the hospital,” she said dully.
“What, you want to throw John in a lake or something?”
“Shut up!” screamed Joanie, and Rafe was so startled the car swerved. John made a noise that Joanie did not think humans were supposed to make. They passed beneath a streetlight and she saw he did not appear to be a color humans were normally supposed to be, either. “Shut up, shut up, shut up….”
“Lake’s okay,” whispered John. “Very…traditional.” Joanie stared at his left ear. “Or hospital. You can…you can explain hospital, if Rafe keeps his mouth shut.”
“You shut up, too,” she said to John. “I am not letting you die just to save my own ass.”
She had no proof that taking John to the hospital would result in his death, but Rafe’s comment about someone autopsying the mutant freak had made her realize that she actually had no idea what taking John to the hospital would result in. He looked like a regular human being at a glance, but he was…different. If he went to a hospital, the first thing they were going to do was probably a transfusion. If incompatible blood types mixed, bad, bad, things happened. Joanie had always meant to stick a syringe in John sometime so they could study his blood, see how it compared to a normal person’s. Since she had not yet gotten around to it, she had no idea what would happen if the two were combined.
“Okay,” said Rafe finally, sounding as though he were trying very hard to be reasonable. “Where are we going, then?”
Joanie thought desperately and saw only one possible way out – for her friend, anyway. “John’s house,” she said.
“What?” asked Rafe.
“No,” said John.
“You people can cure the common cold,” snapped Joanie. “If you can do that, you can patch up a gunshot wound.”
“Mom will…know,” argued John.
Joanie ignored him, or pretended to. “Drive to his house,” she ordered Rafe.
John stirred restlessly on the seat. “Rafe,” he said, “if she…shoots you in the head…right now, from where she’s sitting – “ he had to stop for a moment to catch his breath – “the bullet will…go straight through your occipital lobe and into your temporal one…maybe come out through your eye. If it doesn’t shatter…in your head and go everywhere.” John raised his hand, pointing what looked like a polished stick at Rafe. His hand, she noticed, was covered in his own blood; it was also holding the stick in an odd way, as though to press splinters back into the body of the stick. “I have a magic wand. Which one of us are you more afraid of?”
Rafe drove on in silence for about thirty seconds. “We’re all going to die in this car tonight, aren’t we?” he asked dully.
The wand was clearly broken, presumably when that guy had gotten one good kick in. Joanie realized grabbing it might be roughly the equivalent of sticking a fork in a light socket – it was a technology which operated with a form of energy which could, from what John had told her, be volatile – but she didn’t see many other options. She put the gun down, reached forward, grabbed John’s wrist with one hand, and wrestled the wand out of his hand with her other hand, trying to ignore the wave of nausea which hit as blood stuck to her hands. Harder to ignore was the sensation of having, well, stuck a fork in a light socket – her teeth clicked together so hard abruptly that she was afraid she had chipped one, and her eyes blurred, and a shock of pain went up both of her arms – and the way the car swerved, Rafe either startled or trying to kill them all to put an end to this, but the angles and John’s condition combined to still give her an edge in the struggle over the bit of wood before Rafe could plow into a fence.
“You were saying, Rafe?” asked Joanie, only a tad breathlessly, once she regained full control of her lower jaw.
Rafe began to curse. Joanie, reassured, sat back in her seat, trying not to think about what she was doing too much.
The fact was, she could have let John die. It would have been simpler, safer for her all around, and if he had died, she would have been free. No more looking over her shoulder, no more spending hours coding, just...normal again, all the time. She had decided not to take that course of action, though, and now she was going to have to deal with whatever fallout there was from that decision. Her heart was pounding and she felt sick because, she thought, of more than just the fact that there was blood everywhere and she was committing a felony while coming down from an adrenalin rush. She’d made a decision, and all she could do now was pray to entities she was no longer sure even existed that she had made the right one.
* * * * * * * *
Joe had known things weren’t going to be the same at home – he pretended to be happy for her, but was sure he wasn’t the only one who felt sad and awkward about acknowledging the fact that Julian was going to leave them forever soon – but he had not anticipated them actually becoming bad. He never, he thought bitterly, should have underestimated John’s capacity to screw things up….
His mother sighed and took a sip of her after-dinner tea. They had both been staring at the cups for some time now; Joe took a sip of his, too, and it was decidedly lukewarm.
“I’m worried about your brother,” said Mom.
“Me, too,” said Joe.
He had to tell her, he decided. It felt like a betrayal, but feelings, as John might have said, were not relevant. Facts were relevant, and the facts were that John’s behavior in the last year was that of someone who might need more help than Joe could have provided alone even had John been receptive to it. The fact Sam was the first one who had openly suggested John might actually be a bit…off – no, unstable; he might as well acknowledge it – did not make it untrue. First John had been withdrawn and secretive, clearly ignoring things like food and sleep as he worked on some mysterious project which kept leaving him with burn marks that he wouldn’t talk about, and then his repeated fallings-out with Julian, and then there had been his reaction to Jax Donovan moving in with him, and then that mess over the summer….
I can’t tell you, John had said. I just need you to trust me.
I’m sorry, thought Joe, and then said, “Mom, I – “
Before he could continue that sentence, though, he was interrupted by the sudden frantic, repeating blaring of a car horn. “What’s that?” he asked, standing up. Mom rose from her chair, too.
“I don’t know,” she said, walking over to the kitchen window. She frowned suddenly and leaned forward. “But I think it’s outside our house.”
She headed toward the front door, picking up a cardigan and shrugging it on as she went. Joe followed, not wanting her to go out there where someone was probably drunk by herself.
To his surprise, he recognized the driver as a guy from the neighborhood, one of John’s old friends. To his even greater surprise, he realized that said guy looked as though he was about to pass out from terror. Mom seemed to realize it, too, reaching the car before Joe did and starting to speak – “Rafe? Honey, what’s – “ before she suddenly screamed and Joe ran the last few steps he was lagging behind.
By the time he saw what she’d seen, she was already almost to the passenger door, which flew open without her touching it. Joe, watching events unfold from some remote location far outside his body, asked calmly, “Is he dead?”
It wasn’t his mother who answered him, though. “No,” said another female voice, and he realized Joanie Murphy was getting out of the car on his mom’s side, too.
Mom looked up at her, distraught. “Why are you here?” she demanded, sounding panicked. Joe tried to remember the last time he had heard Mom outright panic. He was pretty sure it had been when she had first heard that nobody had been able to make contact with anyone at Sonora that year. “Why didn’t you call an ambulance – “
“Because I didn’t know what would happen if John got a blood transfusion from a normal person,” said Joanie.
Mom stood up abruptly. For one moment, Joe thought she was going to slap Joanie for insulting John right now of all times, but then he realized the many, many problems with what Joanie had just said.
“What did you say?” asked Mom, more quietly, her voice shaking.
“I know what you are,” said Joanie bluntly. “I don’t want to hurt you, Mrs. Umland,” she added. “Or anyone else here. I just want to help my friend. Please don’t make me do something else.”
* * * * * * * *
Chapter Four: Promises and Revelations
This was how, five minutes later, Joe found himself with his wand in one hand, the gun he had relieved Joanie of with a Disarming Charm in the other, watching impassively as his brother attempted to bleed out on the sofa. Rafe had started to have a panic attack, so Mom had Stunned him, conjured some ropes to tie him up, and left him in the kitchen until she could figure out what to do with him and Joanie. Joanie, still able to move about for now, was kneeling beside John, whispering to him; Joe couldn’t hear what and, doubting it mattered much, paid no attention until Joanie suddenly looked up and gestured to him.
“My bed,” said John.
“Probably better if you don’t move any more right now,” said Joe.
“No,” said John. “Joanie, tell him.”
“Somewhere in your room,” said Joanie, still remarkably calmly for a girl in the shoes she was wearing right now, “in the vicinity of his bed, apparently, John’s hidden a journal. He wants you to find it and – “ her voice faltered for one moment – “if…things happen…to the two of us, it’s up to you whether you burn it or take it to Clark.” Joe stared, not sure which part of this was weirdest, that John was concerned about a secret diary right now or that John’s Muggle maybe-girlfriend knew who John’s magical maybe-boyfriend was.
“But – they can’t know about it,” mumbled John, as emphatically as Joe thought he was capable of at the moment. “Especially Julian. You can’t tell Julian. She can’t see it. Ever.” Joe still just stared. “Promise…you’ll…”
“Okay, okay,” said Joe hastily. “I promise.”
Their mother hurried back out of her bedroom, a jumble of potion bottles and other first aid paraphernalia in her arms. “Did either of you see if there was an exit wound?” she asked them.
Joanie shook her head. “No,” she said. “I mean, I’m pretty sure there wasn’t.”
Mom bit her lip. “That complicates matters.”
No kidding it did. Mom had a talent for understatement. Dropping her supplies on the coffee table, she sorted through them rapidly and came up with a small bottle. Her hands were shaking too much to remove the stopper, though, so Joanie did it and poured it into the marked dosing glass according to Mom’s instructions before persuading John to drink it. Another potion followed, and then Mom looked between Joe and Joanie grimly.
“Will that work?” asked Joanie.
“All that will do is – hopefully – steady John up enough for me to get him to – our hospital – “ apparently even now, Mom censored herself out of habit – “without the shock of the travel killing him,” she said. “Joanie, Joe, darlings, you’ll have to help me with these bandages….”
The application and binding up of considerable quantities of gauze was a harrowing matter. Joe thought the sight of blood all over his mother’s hands might have made him badly want to run screaming from the room anyway, but John did not help the situation by muttering prayers to the Virgin Mary in Latin the whole while. Finally, though, they had it done, and Mom gestured Joe close to her just before she Disapparated with his semiconscious sibling.
“I don’t know what happens next,” she said. “Keep an eye on Joanie.”
Joe nodded, and then was horribly alone except for a bloodstained couch and two people who he did not know what they were going to do with in short order, one of them someone he had once daydreamed about having as a friend. She stood up slowly and Joe tried to force a smile.
“This is going to sound like a cliché,” he admitted, “but – it would be good if you kind of – kept your hands where I can see them.”
Joanie nodded. “I think I can manage that,” she said, quite as though he had asked her to help him bring in groceries.
* * * * * * * *
It wasn’t, of course, as simple as that. For one thing, Joe could not in good conscience – or, frankly, good nerves – let Joanie just sit around with blood all over her hands and shirt. He supposed he could have addressed that problem with a Scouring Charm, but not using magic in front of the neighbors was so hard-wired into him that he found a sweater of his mother’s and let her go into the bathroom to clean herself up and change. Since the door creaked and the room had no window, this gave him a chance to address another problem, which was finding this book which was so important that it might have been the last thing John ever had on his mind.
The most obvious place to hide something in the immediate vicinity of a bed was under the mattress, so Joe checked there first just to rule it out. Sure enough, no book. He then checked the bottom of the mattress for tears or lumps that might suggest something hidden inside it, but that, too, yielded no results. The top of the mattress was clean, too. Joe expected to find the object of his search perched on the narrow strip of wood which protruded from the back of John’s headboard toward the wall – that was where his brother had always hidden books he wanted to read at some time when he wasn’t supposed to read, or which he didn’t think Mom would want him to read at all, when they were younger – but that space, too, was empty.
He stood back for a moment, trying to think like John, or at least what Joe imagined John thought like. It was hard to know for sure if he was right. With a tremendous effort, he shoved the bed away from the wall – and nothing fell to the floor. His teeth grinding together in frustration, he was about to consider himself beaten when he saw something.
A splinter on the side of the bed was not, by itself, something unduly interesting. They had magic, which helped, and the beds were sturdy, real wood instead of particleboard, but they were pieces of furniture which were approaching their second decade in a house with four boys and which Joe was reasonably sure had been used when his parents had bought them. They had their fair share of wear and tear. The size of this one, though, stuck out; it looked as though someone had driven a chisel into the side of the bed at some point and then smoothed the results back down. On the room-facing side of the bed, that might not have stuck out so much, either – at least if the damage was recent; Mom or Dad or one of the older ones would have fixed it by now otherwise – but on the wall-facing side?
Joe reached out to touch it, but withdrew just short of actually doing so. Enchanted for sure. He went to his side of the room to retrieve his wand and started trying to remember everything he had ever learned from Professor Pye. It wasn’t enough to keep his hand from swelling alarmingly when he finally did get a grip on the wood, but with some effort, he was still able to give it a pull. A large piece of wood came away in his hand, revealing what looked like merely a deep scratch. When Joe touched it, though, he felt something softer than wood. He edged his fingers around it, finding limits, and came away with a notebook in his hand.
It was not, it had to be said, a particularly impressive notebook. It wasn’t the cheapest type, not spiral-bound paper, but the red leatherette was only a step up from that. It was also very visibly worn. Some of the damage was clearly deliberate – John had inscribed it with a number of runes; Joe didn’t know enough about them to say for sure what they were – but other looked like evidence of regular, rough handling: cracking corners, a bend in the middle, a stain on the cover which suggested John had spilled tea on it at least once. Aside from the runes, it looked like a completely ordinary notebook, and at Sonora, even the runes wouldn’t have made it inherently suspicious. Cautiously, Joe opened it and found himself…looking at nothing at all remarkable.
“You found it,” said Joanie, and Joe nearly jumped out of his skin as he turned around.
His mom’s sweater did not fit her well; both the hem and the sleeves fell far too low, as Joanie was a good bit shorter than his mom. She had taken her hair down and brushed it so it came down straight behind her ears; she also seemed to have washed her face, because she looked less made-up than usual. She also looked exhausted, and that, combined with the other factors, made her look much older than usual, like an adult. The pretty, perfectly fashionable, consummate teenage overachiever he was used to bore little resemblance to the person in front of him.
He had known Joanie all his life, or close enough. He’d thought of her as someone he knew, but he could not picture the person he knew doing the things Joanie had done tonight. A Muggle not flipping out just finding out about magic was weird. A Muggle finding out about magic after watching her best friend since childhood get shot, then still remaining enough in control of herself to somehow get a gun, use it to force another childhood friend to be her driver, attempt to use it to force Mom not to Obliviate her, and then calmly play nurse to said shot wizard best friend was…Joe didn’t even know what that was, but it was definitely not something he had thought Joanie Murphy was. It occurred to him that he might not know this person at all.
“Yeah,” he said.
Joanie was looking at the book, not Joe. “Red,” she observed. “I haven’t seen red before. Maybe he couldn’t find a brown one?”
For a moment Joe had no idea what she was talking about, but then he put it together: John’s notebooks. Different colors meant different things. Each class had a color and brown was general observation, the books John carried around in his pockets and scribbled things into as they occurred to him. There were only two problems with this theory applying to the book in Joe’s hand.
“Too big,” disagreed Joe. “And too neat inside.” It looked almost like John had been compiling some kind of field guide inside the book; he’d recognized sketches of various plants and animals amidst neatly written text that used full words, not John’s usual haphazard abbreviations, cross-outs, and general evidence of thought processes that occurred faster than they organized.
He held the book close to his side, not sure Joanie should get too good a look at it. “Um – do you want some tea?” he said, unable to think of anything better to say.
Joanie shrugged. “It couldn’t hurt,” she said.
* * * * * * * *
They had, Joe was reasonably sure, a deal, of sorts: if Joanie didn’t try to leave before everything was sorted out, Joe wouldn’t go out of his way to prevent her from doing so. They both knew that was the deal without saying it. Joe didn’t know if Joanie knew how unlikely he was to actually do anything about it if she made a break for the door while he was occupied with the kettle. He just wanted this evening to not be happening, and her absence would help him pretend it wasn’t.
When Joe turned back, though, she was still at the table, still staring at the journal Joe had found inside a hidden compartment in the wall-facing side of John’s bed. Hiding places inside hiding places; that was why Joe had hated playing hide-and-go-seek with John when they were kids. The contents looked completely mundane to Joe, science babble separated by drawings of birds and plants and insects, but John had thought it was urgent that Joe find and dispose of it for him if he died.
He’d worry about that later. Now, he poured the tea and offered Joanie a cup.
“There’s…nothing in it, or anything,” said Joe. “If you want to switch cups or whatever.”
“If we’re playing that game, you’ve already won,” said Joanie. “And I’ve already pretty much been dealt a land war in Asia, haven’t I?” She added enough sugar to her cup to make him wince, which Joe noted, even now, as odd; Joanie never took very much sugar. “Cheers.”
“I’m sorry about all of this,” said Joe.
“It’s not your fault.” She smiled wanly. “Though for whatever it’s worth, I’m sure you’re the nicest, uh, technical kidnapper a girl could ever ask for.” She looked at the journal again. “If John…makes it back, but I don’t know it, could you give him a message?”
Joe shrugged uncomfortably. “Sure.”
“I made my own decisions,” said Joanie. “He's not allowed to blame himself for them. And...tell him I said thanks – he’ll get it. That’s all.”
Joe went back over everything he knew about the situation, and irregularities began to stand out to him: Joanie’s composure, Joanie’s knowing John was fundamentally different enough from her that Muggle medicine might not help him, Joanie just admitting that she knew she might lose her memories of this night – all things that Joanie had no business knowing if all that had happened was John defending himself from some street thugs with magic and alerting her to its existence that way. “Will you do me a favor, too?” he asked.
“What is it?”
Joe put the journal on the table and then pushed it toward her. “Tell me what this is,” he said. “And why it’s so important for Julian to never see it.”
Joanie's amiable expression vanished and she studied him one moment too long.
“I was going to say I don’t know,” she said finally, “but you won’t believe that, will you?”
Joe shook his head. "No."
Joanie nodded slowly and she stared off into space, clearly thinking. “I saw you look at me funny when I put all that sugar in my tea,” she said. “It’s because John told me once that sugar can make a lot of your potions ineffective.”
Joe stood up abruptly, knocking his chair over as he did, out of shock. Joanie just looked at him, somehow making the act of sipping tea in completely normal fashion an act of defiance. Joe forced himself to pick the chair up and sit back down. “What do you know?” he asked.
“Everything,” said Joanie simply. “John told me about – all of you, your people – years ago.”
* * * * * * * *
Joanie watched Joe with concern as he rose again and paced. The details – hair color, eye color, facial proportions – were all wrong, but as he paced, she couldn’t help but see a resemblance to John in how he walked, the way he held his shoulders, the angle at which he raised arm to run a hand through his hair. Finally he turned and looked at her again.
“Everything,” he said.
“Yes,” said Joanie.
“Why?”
That was the ten-million-dollar question. Joanie still wasn’t sure she even knew the answer herself. She decided to tell the story instead of trying to speculate on the answer. “I put it together that he was definitely something - “ she said, and then bit her tongue. “I mean, that he could do – things. So one day I asked. And he told me.”
“But – I – he – you – “ Joe seemed momentarily dumbstruck, a state which once again brought John to mind. “That’s against our laws,” he protested finally. “One of our most important laws. You never tell – “
He stopped talking abruptly, covering his mouth as though he were going to be sick. Joanie knew the feeling. She had scrubbed her hands until it hurt and she still felt like Lady Macbeth.
“I know that, too,” she said, responding to Joe’s objection instead of his delivery or clear feelings. “But you know John – and anyway, it was never supposed to go further than us two.”
“Well, you didn’t manage that one,” snapped Joe. “I’m not even just talking about this – did John tell you what happened at our school?”
“Yes,” said Joanie. “Eventually.” She turned her cup around and around several times between her hands. “At the time he didn’t. He thought it would be better for me if I didn’t know what hit me if we got caught.”
“What a gentleman,” said Joe sarcastically. He ran his hands through his hair again. “So you know everything. That – that explains a lot, actually.” He looked up at her. “Why – how – you aren’t reacting like you’re supposed to,” he observed.
“What, calling the Inquisition?” asked Joanie, forcing a laugh as she draped one arm around the back of her chair to look more comfortable. Unfortunately, changing her position let her see Rafe, lying unconscious and bound in the floor in the little alcove leading to the back door. Her expression must have changed, because Joe suddenly made a gesture as though to reach out to her. She drew back instinctively and he smiled. She could not tell if the expression was more bitter, amused, or sad.
“At least being afraid of us,” said Joe.
“Joe – " said Joanie, and then reconsidered. She wrapped her arms around herself. Joe waited her out.
“Eight seconds,” she said.
“Eight seconds what?” asked Joe.
“That’s about how long it took John to send a street gang running from us,” she said. “I helped – I ruptured one guy’s eardrum and then broke his nose and then kicked him in the junk – " she was surprised to see a look of mingled surprise and admiration on Joe’s face as she confessed this – “but the other two…one of them he just put down. The other one, the one who shot him…he threw him across the street and through the windscreen of some guy’s car.”
“I can’t say I feel sorry for that guy,” observed Joe.
“I don’t, either,” said Joanie quickly. “I don’t care if he died.” She wrapped her arms around herself the other way. “Better for us if he did. It’s just…” She tucked her hair behind her ear. “I’d never seen it before.”
“Seen what?”
“What John could do,” said Joanie. “It’s…it’s one thing to know, but seeing it, it takes some getting used to, you know?”
Joe smiled disarmingly. Joanie wondered if he did so on purpose. “Not really,” he said. “I’ve seen it all my life.”
Joanie very deliberately put out her hands and took his, standing to face him. “Even – after that, though,” she said. “I know it’s – it’s no different than being Gifted, or an athlete, or whatever,” she said. “You can do things I can’t. I’m pretty sure I can do some things you can’t. It’s…that’s how I’ve always thought about it, anyway.”
Joe smiled again, but this time clearly bitterly. “I’m pretty sure you’re a rarity, then,” he said. “Your friend looked like he thought we were all monsters.”
“No,” said Joanie, and she hugged him.
She had predicted it would take about ten seconds for his shoulders to begin to shake. He only exceeded her count by two. She petted his shoulder – she could reach no higher – and made soothing noises as he mumbled, “he can’t die, Joanie – it can’t – this – this can’t be happening to us, it doesn’t make any sense – “
“I know,” said Joanie, her own eyes stinging. In a way, all the complications – Rafe’s panic, the need to disclose what she knew to John’s family, realizing that Joe was holding her hostage in the politest way possible, trying to figure out how to get back in control of her situation – had helped her, shielded her from the truth: John might actually die. Tomorrow, the world might be a place that didn’t have John Umland in it. What happened to her then? Even if Joe and Mrs. Umland hadn’t Known now, it was just….
Not practical. Not practical was what it was. She couldn’t think about that right now. She and Joe, who she imagined was thinking much the same thing, pulled themselves together at about the same moment.
“We’re going to get through this,” said Joanie firmly. “One way or another.”
“Yeah,” agreed Joe, and Joanie had just started to feel a little more secure, a little more confident that she had some measure of freedom and control over what happened to her, when suddenly two things she had not reckoned on happened: Joe suddenly leaned forward and kissed her and the front door of the house suddenly opened, admitting someone just out of view behind the part-walls which separated the kitchen from the entryway and the living room.