Vanishing Rain (Blue Spectrum Chronicles Book 2) Page 7

  “Hey, Garment?”

  “Yes?”

  “Will you…can you tell Dove that I’m okay…where I’m going?” I caught a ragged breath in my chest. “So they…don’t worry about me.”

  Garment shook his head back and forth, his long hair glistening in the dim light. “No butterfly. It’s too dangerous right now. Maybe later, when things die down…”

  “Later?” I asked desperately.

  “Yes, later.” He smiled wickedly at me then. “Maybe someday, the Rebel forces will take over, win against the Administration, and all of these ridiculous rules can go by the wayside.” He looked angry, something I had never seen on his face before, and I realized I wasn’t the only one who had suffered under Ruler 9’s endless mandates. Pan and Garment, Blush and Sergio were forced to live a lie every day. They were free to some degree, but they were certainly slaves to the mandates, the foolish rules that were harshly enforced by the Administration.

  Garment’s voice brought me back. “For now, it’s best to let you be Vanish.” His blue eyes were dreary oceans and a small tear slipped out of one of them. He didn’t seem embarrassed or even try to wipe it away.

  Chapter17

  Rain Drops

  The last weeks I spent with Garment, Blush, Sergio, and Pan, I was Vanish. I practiced saying it while Pan and I sparred, while I walked and jogged endless miles on the treadmill. I said it over and over in my head while I ate the meals that Sergio brought me. At some point it became almost real, and I learned to like it. Rain was still in there somewhere, but Vanish had taken over.

  I had fallen into a routine that I liked, even though I missed studying. It was an ordinary day in the fashion designer’s back room. I woke up early, as usual, and got ready for my session with Pan. I heartily ate a huge breakfast, and I was grateful that the throwing up had stopped. I often thought about the creature growing inside of me, curious if it would even be a normal baby. The swelling on my muscular stomach had formed into a tight little bump.

  As I was shoveling in the food, Blush entered. “Time for some tattoos,” she told me in a matter of fact voice.

  “What?” I screeched. “Tattoos are illegal.”

  “Not in the Asters.”

  “But, I don’t want any tattoos,” I sputtered between huge bites of eggs and sausage.

  “It’s okay. They aren’t permanent. In about a year they’ll fade and you’ll never even know you had them. But you sure as hell better have some when you get to the Asters. Or they’ll kill you on the spot.”

  “Great,” I pouted, crossing my arms across my chest.

  “This is what I’m thinking,” Blush started. “Raindrops. Bloody raindrops. What do you think?”

  “Disgusting,” I retorted.

  “Good, bloody raindrops it is.”

  “How about butterflies?” I asked. “Garment calls me butterfly all the time.”

  Blush scoffed, her gruff voice returning. “Jesus Christ, kid, are you just trying to get killed?”

  I stared into Blush’s plain hazel eyes, knowing she was right. Where I was going, I had to look tough, be tough.

  I sighed, heaving my shoulders in resignation. “Okay. Do the bloody raindrops.”

  “This is going to sting a bit,” she told me as she picked up a pen-like instrument with a needle on the end of it. At one time I might have gotten sick, passed out, just at the sight of the thing. But after removing the tracker-timer myself and all of the stuff Pan had done to me, it seemed pretty tame.

  “Hold out your arm.” I gave her my right arm, the one that wasn’t all scarred up. Gradually, her tongue sticking out of her mouth as she worked, delicate, bloody raindrops spattered up my arm. There must have been about thirty of them, staring at me in ocean blues and blood reds. Occasionally Blush would fill in a raindrop entirely in red. It stung at first where she placed the needle, but after a while I became accustomed to it.

  “Other arm,” she ordered. I held out my scarred arm, wondering what she was going to do with it. She repeated the same pattern, only when she got to the scar where my tracker-timer had been, she turned it into a pool of blood.

  “Ewww, that’s disgusting,” I complained. She ignored me.

  “Lay down now. I’m going to put some on your collarbone.” Sighing, I laid down on the couch, closing my eyes while she painstakingly tattooed more bloody raindrops across the top of my chest and collarbone. It felt like insects with sharp legs were walking across me, but I had quit fussing.

  “Finished,” she finally announced. I sat up groggily, and Blush handed me a mirror.

  I glanced at the image, bloody raindrops making a trail across my body, my hair cut short. Muscles bulging out where once it had been soft and supple. I was right. Rain had vanished.

  When Garment entered the room, he clapped his hands and the lights flickered on and off, his rings jingling against each other like miniature chimes. “Our little butterfly is gone. You look mean, daaarling…as mean as any Exile could be.”

  I gulped. I didn’t want to look mean. I wanted to be at home with Dove and Snow, my dad and the toddlers. I wanted my long hair back and those ridiculous tattoos off of my body. I wanted Orion back, to meet him in our little hedge gap.

  Then I thought of the baby, the one that was growing inside of me. Orion’s baby. I let out a huge puff of air, and my bangs swirled in the wind of it. I could do this. I could be mean to save the baby. I thought of Scarlett. Tomorrow is another day. Tomorrow is another day. I borrowed those words and seared them into my brain.

  I examined my arms, holding them up in the grey light. I had never seen anyone with tattoos, only pictures of people from a long time ago in the vids. Sitting up slowly, I smiled at Garment. “Yeah, I’m mean alright.”

  Just then Pan came in. “Well, well, what have we here?” he asked in a loud voice. Blush and Garment both glared at him. “Oops. Sorry,” Pan apologized, covering his mouth with his firm hand. He set down a duffel bag with the other.

  “Ready for training, Vanish?” he asked me.

  “Sure,” I answered. I had actually come to enjoy our sessions. By keeping my body busy, I was able to keep my mind off of Orion and my family. Of having to leave soon. Of a baby that would be born in a few months in a place I knew relatively nothing about.

  I had begun to refer to the baby as the Peanut, because I figured it was about as big as a peanut according to the Health classes I had taken. Sometimes, when I laid awake in my couch-bed, listening to Sergio snoring in the other couch-bed, I thought of names for it. Peanut, of course wouldn’t work.

  Would I keep our family crest name – weather? I tossed different weather names around in my head. I liked Thunder. I could name him Thunder after my cousin. Or even Snow, after my brother. Ice would be nice…even though I hardly knew that brother. I didn’t know why, but I never thought of the Peanut as a girl. Always a boy. Maybe it was because Garment put the thought into my head when I first heard his heartbeat on Pan’s machine.

  “Yoo hoo!” It was Pan, and he was flashing his hand before my face.

  “Oh, sorry,” I told him, shaking my head. “I was just thinking about some stuff.” By then Blush and Garment had left the room, and it was just Pan and me.

  He knelt down onto his knees, undoing the scruffy dull green duffel bag. “Well, you have a lot to be thinking about, I suppose.” His voice was kind, so different than the methodical man who saved me when I was sick and who came every day to teach me how to survive in the Asters.

  “Hey, Pan?”

  Pan was pulling out some sharp knives and some kind of a marker from the bag. “What?” he hummed absent mindedly.

  “If you’re a doctor, then how do you know how to do all of this fighting stuff?” I didn’t know what to call the training I had been receiving. It wasn’t exactly martial arts or boxing or any other sport I had learned about.

  He chuckled deeply and turned his face toward me. Muscles bulged from his shirt, even though he wasn’t that big. “I was a
Rebel Fighter first, Vanish. That’s where I got the name Panther.”

  “Will I have to be a Rebel Fighter?”

  “Well, you can’t right away. You’re pregnant. But you have to look like one.” He smiled across at me, fatherly like. “Which you do, by the way.”

  “What are the Rebel Fighters…ah…fighting against?”

  “Fighting for.”

  “Oh, what are they fighting for?”

  “Freedom.”

  I thought about freedom for a second. I had never felt freer than the months I spent locked up in Garment’s back room. “Why did you stop fighting…become a doctor?” I furrowed my brow, thinking I would never come back here if I didn’t have to.

  “For Garment, of course,” He answered as he purposely strode across the room and drew a large red circle on the wall. He stepped back, examining his work. “Not bad,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Garment said he was an Exile.”

  “He was,” Pan answered, examining his work.

  “So why are you here?” It didn’t make sense to me. Pan stepped back and met my eyes.

  “Garment was miserable there. He missed his family, and he isn’t made of Rebel Fighter material. You’ve probably guessed that. He was…a…target for the other men.”

  “He said you saved him.”

  “I did. I kicked some ass and brought him home. Dove took care of the rest.” He wrinkled his forehead. “Times were different then. Less mandates.”

  “Will I be…”

  He laughed out loud, as if reading my mind. “I have no doubt that you can be a Rebel Fighter.” He was stern then, using his doctor voice. “After the baby is born.”

  “Okay,” I answered, not really picturing myself as a Rebel Fighter.

  I turned to the circle he made on the wall. “What is it?” I asked, curious why he would write on the wall.

  “Target.”

  “For what?”

  “You’ll need to use a weapon in the Asters if you’re going to make it.”

  “A weapon?” This was all getting too creepy.

  “Do you want to get killed?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Neither did I. So I learned to use one of these.” With that he stood back and launched a knife through the air, hitting the center of the circle.

  “Bingo. Right on the money,” Pan bragged. He cast his eyes toward me, smirking almost like Orion used to. I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “So you think this is funny?” His words became mean, harsh, a Pan I had never seen before.

  “No…no,” I stammered. “You just reminded me of someone I know.” I paused. “Knew.”

  Pan wrinkled his forehead, a look of disgust on his face. “The father?” he asked in a snide voice.

  I nodded my head, tamping back tears. How was it that Pan and Garment could weasel my deepest feelings out of me?

  His voice was still curt. “Found out about the baby and just left, huh?”

  “No, it wasn’t like that at all. He left before he even knew about the baby.”

  Pan’s eyebrows shot up. “Where did he go?”

  I sighed outwardly. “That’s the problem. I don’t know. He just disappeared.”

  Pan brushed his hand across his bald head. “Disappeared?”

  I nodded, the pain of losing Orion coming back to visit me like a murderer in the night. I put up another layer over my heart, because I couldn’t take any more hurting over Orion.

  “Any clues?”

  I told Pan about the letter K that was on the back of my necklace he had given me and about the K I had discovered dug into the ground in the hedge gap where we would meet.

  “So that’s why you want to go to the Asters? To find this boy?” Pan’s eyes were narrowed, and I had never seen him this solemn.

  “No,” I confidently told him. “He left me without even saying good-bye. Why would I want someone like that?”

  “Then why the Asters?”

  I thought for a few minutes. “It’s the only place I know of. And where else would I go?”

  Pan sighed deeply, his thin muscular chest expanding in the tight jumpsuit he wore. “There are other places…”

  “Is it that dangerous in the Asters?” I asked, reaching for a knife from Pan’s extended hand.

  “It all depends, Vanish. I haven’t been there in years.”

  “Depends on what?”

  “On what they’re doing, fighting for now.”

  “You don’t know?”

  Pan shook his head. “They’ve been strangely quiet for about a year. No explosions, bombings.”

  “Bombings?”

  “The Administration calls them earthquakes. So the masses never know.”

  I thought about the earthquake that had happened right before Orion came. Could it have been a real earthquake or the Rebel Fighters? Orion’s father was Head of Operations in the military. I bit my lower lip, thinking. Maybe the Rebel Fighters had tried to bomb his dad that day.

  “There was an earthquake…a few months ago.”

  “Yes, I have wondered about that. But I don’t have any underground information anymore, so I can’t be sure.”

  I wondered about Pan as he held my arm in correct position for throwing a knife. He was a mystery to me, but somehow, I had learned to trust him.

  With my life. And my baby’s.

  Tomorrow may be another day, but on that day I wanted to hang on tightly to Pan and never let go…because I knew it was getting close to having to tell him good-bye.

  My mind and heart went blank for a moment, just thinking about it. I had become an expert at saying good-bye. I needed to learn to say hello.

  Chapter18

  Map

  For the next few weeks Pan and I practiced throwing knives at different targets. It was difficult to do in the confined space, but he said I was a natural. I laughed at that, thinking of how hard I had to study to get top grades. The only thing that ever came naturally to me was math, and in the Asters, I doubted if I would be needing Geometry or Trigonometry.

  Pan was showing me a new technique with the knives, a different grip on the handle that would send it spiraling through the air and land with more force on the target when Garment paraded in. He was wearing a magenta robe with a sailor’s collar. He was void of all make-up, which always surprised me. I cocked my head, examining him. He was really handsome in an older guy kind of way.

  Pan dropped his knife onto the couch and went to Garment, hugging him. “You look better without all that shit on your face,” he told him. At first I was upset at how he was talking to Garment, but then they busted up laughing. I must have had a strange look on my face because they both turned to me. “I have to wear this awful make-up as a front. You know, the fashion designer image. I actually hate it.”

  “Like my tattoos?”

  “Exactly.” Garment set down a large piece of paper onto the couch, spreading out the wrinkles with his slender hands.

  “What is that?” I asked, leaning over him.

  “Your map. It’s about time for our butterfly to take air.” He turned his head to me, the saddest expression consuming his face. A small tear dripped out of his eye, landing on the paper.

  I didn’t know if it was from being pregnant or losing Orion and my family or just the knowledge that I had to leave, but I burst into tears, bawling like a baby. Garment held me close to him. “There, there, butterfly,” he told me over and over, patting me on the back. I buried my head in his thin chest, holding on to him like he was the very giver of life.

  Finally, I stopped crying. Garment pushed me away, reaching out and fluffing my bangs back. I remembered my mother trying to do the same thing, and how I had swatted her hand away.

  At that moment I knew that I would name my baby for Dove and Garment and Falcon. They weren’t my blood relatives, but they had become my family. The baby would be named for a bird. I smiled at Garment. Maybe he would be Eagle. Eagle. I liked that.

  “Okay, let�
��s get on with it,” he ordered, waving his hand in the air.

  I sniffed, wiping my eyes. “What is that?” I asked him.

  “Your map to the Asters.”

  “I already have one,” I told him. “I copied the sewer route from my tablet before I left.”

  Garment gave me a somewhat harsh look. “Sewers? You’ve got to be kidding me. Daaarling, you would have to eat rats to survive there.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “And besides, if you copied it from your tablet, they’ll be watching the sewers for you.”

  I wrinkled my brow. “Oh, I never thought about that.”

  Just then Pan sauntered in, followed by Blush. They both sat down on the couch without saying a word.

  Garment started, pointing his long finger on the map. “Here is the entrance to the abandoned subway. The subway route is much shorter and tons safer than the sewers.” He paused dramatically. “And eating rats would not be good for the baby, would it?”

  I shook my head.

  “Last we knew, there is a network of people along the subway route who will help you get to the Asters.”

  “But once you get on the other side, you’re on your own,” Pan sternly told me. His voice was rough, harsh.

  “Okay.”

  “Is she ready?” Blush asked.

  “As ready as she’ll ever be,” Pan answered. “She can’t wait any longer. She’ll really be showing soon.

  Garment cupped my chin in his hand, his pale blue eyes boring into mine. “Tomorrow, butterfly, you will soar.”

  “NO!” I screamed. “I’m not ready.”

  “Shhhh,” Blush chided. “Do you want us all to get caught?”

  “Sorry.” I swallowed. Hard.

  “You’re ready,” Blush told me. “If I say so, it’s true.”

  “She’s right,” Pan chimed in. “If you’re going to do this, it has to be tomorrow.” He grinned at me, a lopsided smile with knowledge of a secret between us. “But we’re going to tell you good-bye, Vanish.” He was talking about Orion, and my heart splintered into two distinct pieces, thinking about telling them good-bye, and remembering the good-bye I never got from Orion. Or the bad-bye, as I had come to think of it, because I never could come up with a good reason to say good-bye to people you love.