Chapter 37

[The following chapter contains strong language. Reader caution is advised.]

Friday 23rd April 1999

It shouldn’t surprise you to hear that the last few days of the Easter holiday weren’t particularly happy ones. The five of us were still reeling from… well. From having the rug, the floor and the crust of the Earth pulled out from beneath us. For only being two and a half days, it seemed to take forever to pass, and the arrival of the new school term was oddly relieving. Almost like it gave us something to occupy our minds.

I was surprised to see Melody sat in form on Tuesday morning; surprised further by the revelation that Kayleigh and Will were now being reported missing. Apparently, they had already been declared as such over the holidays… my best guess on how we missed that was that Harmony had obscured it from us. The same Someone Else’s Problem field trick that she apparently used on most of our monster fights.

… still utterly surreal thinking of her as being the one controlling all of this…

“There are other teens missing here and there,” Melody told me after Mr Davies finished speaking to us. “I assume from your face that you’ve been kept away from the news.”

“Why would she hide it from us…?” I asked, already exhausted by the antics of our power source.

“I don’t know how her mind works. Whatever she’s thinking, the bottom line is that she didn’t want you to know about it.”

She ran her hand into her hair while lounging on the table. Despite its reduced length over the holidays, it was apparently back to how it was last term… perhaps even a little longer. I’d almost call it inexplicable, but that word was fast losing meaning to me.

“You could make a fortune off that hair regrowth trick…” I quipped to bring the oddity to attention.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she replied with surprisingly-playful twinkle. “This is the length of Melody Hill’s hair.”

I wasn’t entirely sure how to take that, other than a sign that the so-called inexplicable was indeed involved.

“You should watch out, Alex,” my apparent nemesis added. “I’ll hazard a guess you haven’t heard about those weird sightings around town.”

“Oh yeah?”

“A monster, apparently. Who knows what that means?”

This time, there was nothing playful about her words or expression. She seemed genuinely thrown by the idea, as though the sea of possibilities was as terrifying as it was exciting for her.

For what it’s worth, school did manage to distract me from my misery and discomfort at least a little. What I hadn’t estimated was how innate that feeling was, how deep-rooted. The thought of it all would bubble up out of nowhere and consume me all over again. She’d engineered everything. She’d been inside our heads for months.

Her analysis of me kept returning, over and over, like a lyric seared into my mind.

“You’re the monster, no one else. But fuck them. But fuck yourself.”

My thoughts on myself. My verdict of myself.

Like the night of Melody’s party. Like the sleepover. Like so many times, I’ve proven myself the monster.

I wasn’t happy with that conclusion, and it certainly hurt to hear someone else say it aloud, especially in the presence of my friends. I could only imagine they felt the same about having their darkest sides – their apparent psychological failings – broadcast so abruptly. We hadn’t really discussed that, almost acting like that particular moment didn’t happen… or at least that it didn’t bear talking about. It wouldn’t be particularly comfortable for any of us.

Friday arrived before long, and brought with it the eleventh anniversary of the recovery of the Lokon weapons… and the death of Elliott Radley. After school finished, Kendal drove the five of us to the cemetery where Dakota’s father was buried.

“It’s kinda crazy that he’s here and you’ve been living in Ireland…” Bao commented as Kendal parked up outside the cemetery grounds.

“Mam and I did visit a couple of times… first and fifth anniversaries. We stayed over with Neil and Cassie.”

Dakota stared out past the drizzle-splattered window, taking in the view she hadn’t seen in six years.

“Do you remember where his grave is?” I asked her gently.

“Start at the big tree, eight along, three down,” she recited. “I’ll try not to keep you waiting…”

With that, she unbuckled her seat belt and opened the door.

“You’re sure you don’t want any of us to come with you?” I double-checked, my heart aching for her.

“I need to do it on my own. The best thing you can do is figure out something fun to talk about on the way back to mine.”

She flashed us a weak and gentle smile, before closing the car door and heading off into the rain.

“… how the hell are we supposed to think of something fun to discuss?” Zahid grumbled from the front passenger seat. “We’ve been the grouch brigade for almost a week…”

“But we can’t stay like this forever,” Kendal countered with an almost airy tone. “We’ve been the way we are for our whole lives, so…”

None of us spoke for a few moments, unsure quite how to respond to her reasoning. I saw Dakota reach the grave, but felt it wrong to watch her as she attended it and turned my attention elsewhere.

“I know!” our driver spoke suddenly. “I saw this cat and- well, I’ll leave it for when Dakota gets back.”

And straight back into silence. I hated the idea of this being our new normal… conversation was supposed to come naturally to us, at least.

“Bao, give us interesting facts about cats,” I requested through the quiet.

“Top Cat only ran for thirty episodes,” he informed us immediately, like a machine built to dispense trivia at a moment’s notice.

“I don’t think it was Top Cat…”

Kendal said that as though there was an honest possibility that the cat she’d seen was a cartoon character from decades ago.

“I mean, y’know, real-life Top Cat,” she clarified like she knew what I’d been thinking.

“What would real-life Top Cat be?” I pondered aloud.

“He’d lead a pack of stray cats and live in a bin.”

“And wear a purple hat and waist-coat,” Zahid added incredulously.

“Good luck getting that on a cat,” I noted, taken with the mental image.

“I had a friend in Primary school who dressed his pet cat up once…”

Bao let that rest in the air for a moment, before continuing:

“He came into school with scratches all over his arms.”

“Makes you wonder why they put clothes on cartoon cats,” Kendal remarked. “It’s just giving kids ideas.”

By the time Dakota returned to us, wiping rain and tears from her cheeks, we were discussing if Donald Duck was really part of the navy and if he was fired for not wearing trousers. Kendal’s cat anecdote was completely forgotten.

…

“We… we need to talk about everything.”

No sooner had we settled down at Dakota’s than she made that statement.

“That’s a big topic,” Bao replied dryly enough that I wasn’t sure if he was joking or being serious.

“No… the weapons. Lokonessence. The monsters. Basically… should we keep doing this?”

The towel she’d used to dry her hair was now being wringed tensely in her hands.

“Harmony already said she’ll just force our hand if we refuse to do anything,” Zahid reminded us. “And by the way, if she’s in our heads, she’ll be listening to this entire conversation.”

“Which is why our other option is to abandon the weapons,” Dakota said bluntly.

“And then she hands them to another group of people and it starts over again…” I suggested, the image of strangers thrust into our position springing to mind. Somehow, I felt a little jealous, or remorseful, at the idea of our role being taken up by other people. Why should I? As much as being the Painters was our unique thing, it apparently may not be such a badge of honour.

“Soooo… do we try to destroy them?”

Kendal was perched on the sofa, hugging her legs.

“I dunno how we’d do it, but wouldn’t that free Harmony or something?”

“Tried that the other day. Threw one of the blades out of the window six times. They don’t even take damage,” Bao told her.

“And we know they can’t damage each other…” I added. “We can’t even bury them or chuck them in the ocean, because she’ll know and get them back.”

“So, it’s us or it’s someone else,” Dakota summarised for us, furrowing her brow at our conundrum.

“Fuck…”

It wasn’t often that I heard Zahid saying that with such unease.

“I wish I was cool with palming them off on the first bunch of chancers we see, but it doesn’t feel right…”

“There’s your answer,” Bao said immediately after. “If even Zahid’s too moral to drop the weapons-”

“The hell makes me the immoral one?!”

“So…” Dakota spoke up before the situation could escalate, “does that mean we just keep fighting the monsters? If we’re going to keep on using the weapons, it sounds like we won’t have any other choice…”

“It’s not like it wasn’t fun before,” Kendal reasoned.

“Now you sound like Harmony…” I told her, a little uncomfortably.

“It’s true though… maybe this isn’t so bad? We’ve had a blast up till now. What difference does knowing make?”

“What, you’re okay with being used, then?” Zahid asked her in disbelief. “You wanna be jumping to attention whenever she claps her hands?”

“We have been for months-”

“I wouldn’t have if I knew!”

“Calm down, both of you!” Dakota snapped, and waited to make sure nothing more was said before continuing. “I don’t like this much either. I feel used, and violated. I’m sorry, Kendal, but that does change how some of us see things. But…”

“There’s a but?” Bao questioned with honest surprise.

“Kendal has a point too. Harmony’s been controlling everything for months. The only thing that’s changed is that we know the truth. And if there’s nothing we can do to change things, then…”

“Then we have to accept it,” I concluded as she trailed off. “This sucks…”

“I know,” Dakota nodded despondently. “And I can’t figure out how we can accept it yet…”

“I’m still not gonna take this lying down,” Zahid stated with a growl. “I’ll keep thinking of ways we can get out of it, and the second I get a good idea…”

He didn’t complete that thought, for what felt like an uncertainty of how things would pan out for us if he did.

“Hey, I’ve been thinking,” Bao took the floor. “You know when she said about… abnormal brain chemistry? Maybe she was just lying?”

That just seemed like clutching at straws. Like an excuse with which we could brush that uncomfortable moment aside and act like it meant nothing.

“Because I don’t feel crazy, not that I know what that feels like…”

“She described us-”

I cut myself off there, reconsidered my words. Harmony’s summary of me may have been accurate, but it was wrong of me to claim that was the case for my friends.

“- well, she described me right… I guess…”

“I don’t mean that,” he clarified, “I mean her saying those things mean we’re crazy.”

“We’re not crazy!” Kendal assured him cheerily. “We’re just us!”

“You wanted to drive off a cliff just because we could survive it,” Zahid reminded her.

“And you flip out and smash stuff up once in a while, doesn’t mean we’re crazy.”

“No offence, but both of those sound pretty crazy…” Bao told them awkwardly.

“Okay, fine, so we’re the psycho freak club now.”

And with that, Zahid got to his feet and headed for the door.

“Excuse me if I’m not fine being some crazy person doing whatever a rainbow girl tells me to.”

Bao sprung up immediately at that.

“I didn’t mean-”

“Leave him…” Dakota urged softly as Zahid disappeared from sight. A few moments later, the front door slammed, and Bao slumped back onto the sofa.

“I just…” he muttered lowly.

“You know him. He’s not angry, he’s upset. He’ll be fine,” she said with soothing tone.

“Still…”

Guilt scrawled all over his face, shoulders hung forward.

I tried to formulate the right words in my head, to figure out exactly what I needed to say to help my friend.

All the while, Kendal patted his back.

“It’ll be alright! You two’ll be joking about together tomorrow.”

That simple. Of course.

…

Night. With no school the next day, I was staying over at Dakota’s… though we’d not spent much time on our own, since we went back to mine for dinner after Bao and Kendal left. I don’t know whether Dakota had been planning on bringing it up, or if it only came to mind when she voiced it, but as we settled down in bed:

“You aren’t a monster, Alex.”

So abrupt, I could’ve fallen out of bed in shock.

“Yeah, that’s just… I guess a turn of phrase…”

Expertly bluffed, Alex Matthews…

“I don’t know anything about what she said, but you’re a good person, and that’s what counts,” she spoke with such conviction.

“And I’m not going to leave you,” I told her promptly. “At least, I don’t plan on it. Does that help?”

We stared at each other for a moment, at an intellectual stalemate. She didn’t look hurt, simply uneasy.

“I know that you mean it, but then I know you can’t control it,” she finally answered. “You could… have to move away, or somehow die for real, and I…”

“You can tell me I’m a good person but…”

I suddenly realised I had no point here, at least not anything I could properly articulate. My armoury was already depleted.

Dakota moved around, sitting a little upright now, resting her elbow on the pillow and planting her cheek in her palm.

“I remembered something earlier. Something Dad told me, this one time I… I think I’d had a bad day at school, another girl had been mean to me or something. I didn’t feel like talking about it, but he knew I was upset. And he sat me down and told me… ‘the people who love you can lift the world from your shoulders if you let them’.”

Her eyes drifted shut for a moment, and as her mind raced back to that instant, to a memory intimately hers, she smiled. She revelled in it, and then opened her eyes once more, looking deep into mine.

“Sometime – when I’m ready, when I’m comfortable – I want to talk to you about what losing him did to me. And when you’re ready… please, please talk to me about how you feel.”

That beautiful gaze had me transfixed. What could I say? I was still too wrong to show myself to her. And if she had to force me away for who I really was, what would it do to her?

“When… when I’m ready…” I repeated.

“And not a minute later,” she insisted with a cheeky smile, and then gently kissed my lips. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” I told her with every inch of my heart. “And I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be. Take as long as you need.”

She ran her free hand through my messy hair affectionately, and looked at me like I was the greatest thing in the world.