The Rift (5 page)

Gloria dialed 911 and started talking to the
operator.

“
This is bad,” Pieter said. “Look,
we need to ditch those weapons. Vero, you need to get the blood off
yours. If the cops show up, they’re going to think we did
this.”

“
What?” Vero asked.

“
This guy got killed by a medieval
weapon,” Pieter said. “What do you think this’ll look
like?”

Sirens echoed in the distance.

“
Why do the SLO police have to be
so quick?” Pieter asked. “Neil, can you cook up a good
story?”

“
Uh, that’s always been your job,”
Neil said.

Pieter looked at him. “You two don’t have blood
on you, right? Look, you and Gloria heard noise and decided to
check it out. James was injured when you got here. You saw the
attackers—Jed and that short guy—but they ran away. Got
it?”

“
Got it,” Neil said.

“
And we were never here. Now, gimme
your weapons. Vero and I need to be gone.”

Pieter and Vero ran for the bushes, holding two
weapons each. They grabbed James’s pack, forded the empty stream,
and came up in the back of the parking lot. Red-and-blue lights
flashed by on the street. Vero watched the gear for a minute while
Pieter brought the car into a shady corner of the strip mall. She
tossed everything in the backseat, and he drove off.

Exhaustion hit Vero hard. She felt like she
should be wide awake and terrified, but her body began to shut
down. She vaguely remembered arriving at home and falling into her
warm bed.

Dead people had to feel like this.

Vero woke up and lay half-asleep under her
blankets, the warm metal band still touching the skin on her upper
arm. Her heavy limbs felt glued to the bed, and she
groaned.

At some point, Isabella got out of her bed and
banged around the room a bit; Vero pulled the blankets over her
head. Bella always gave
her
a hard time for making so much
noise in the morning. Her sister seemed to be enjoying the revenge.
Bella pulled a bright-red Panda Express polo shirt over her bulky
body, strapped on a bicycle helmet, and left the room, slamming the
door closed on the way out.

Despite the stale odor wafting up from the
carpet, despite the chipped paint on the walls, this place felt
comfortingly normal. Not normal like Pieter or normal like her
friends Kristin or Carrie, but normal for Vero. From this room,
everything about James and Ruach seemed like a dream.

The three-foot battle axe leaning against her
wall disagreed. The handle was dark wood, and a leather strap,
which they’d found in James’s pack, covered the blade. A blanket
lay mostly draped over it, but someone—Bella, no doubt—had taken a
peek. That couldn’t be good. Vero should’ve shoved it in their
overstuffed closet, but everything from the night before,
everything after the blaze of the armor went out, was
fuzzy.

Vero pushed away the blankets. Her arms swung
like rusty hinges. Against the protests of her body, she stood. She
flipped open her ancient phone and found the battery nearly dead:
10:14 a.m.

She texted Pieter. “I need you.”

Vero undressed, wrapped herself in a towel, and
walked to the bathroom. She stood under the hot water of the shower
and began to wash away the grogginess, along with dirt and dried
blood. The water flowed black down the drain. She thoroughly
shampooed her hair and stood in the warm stream until it went
tepid, courtesy of their tiny water heater. After a quick towel
dry, she trudged back to her room.

She dressed, then pulled the armband out of the
pile of her clothes. The sight of it forced violent memories to her
consciousness. Gold surrounded a red gem, maybe a ruby. It was
thin, so it wouldn’t show under loose sleeves, but most of Vero’s
clothing wouldn’t hide it. She buried the object in the bottom of
her purse and plodded to the kitchen.

Gabriella, who shared the other bedroom with
their mom, sat at the dining room table in a little alcove of the
kitchen. Tiny shorts failed to cover her thick thighs; a bulge of
her stomach peeked out from beneath her stained shirt. Beyond the
table, a small window showed a sunny day over Tolosa Mobile Home
Park, a neighborhood that the rest of SLO hid behind a tall wall
and pretended didn’t exist. The combined incomes of her mom,
Isabella, and Gabriella paid for a decaying, two-room mobile home
in “the happiest town in America.”

“
Te levantaste tarde, ay,”
Gabriella said.

Vero wasn’t up
that
late. Trust her
sister to notice and comment. Vero slid a couple pieces of bread
into the toaster and grabbed a mug for some instant coffee. She
continued in Spanish. “What, I’m not allowed to sleep
in?”

Gabriella talked with her mouth full of
off-brand Lucky Charms. “Stay out all night with the boy
toy?”

“
I wish.” Vero pushed the thoughts
of James and Jed out of her mind and managed a little laugh. “He
brought along a friend of his on a double date. I’m just lucky
nobody I knew spotted us.”

“
Better night than mine. Worked
till almost midnight.”

“
Ouch.”

“
When you joining us? We’re
hiring.”

“
Uh, maybe never.”

“
Come on, Carlos’d love his
littlest sister-in-law in the shop.”

Juggling food service jobs with community
college seemed like the next step for Mendoza women after high
school. Only Emilia—their oldest sister—had escaped the trap; she
had married a restaurant owner in SLO and now cared for their baby,
Maria. Vero, for her part, needed to get away from this family
after graduation. She’d give anything to join her classmates, who’d
probably move somewhere far away, somewhere fun, for college.
Likely, she’d end up like her sisters: reeking of grease every
Saturday night.

Gabriella poked her. “Oh, pretty baby Sister.
Doesn’t have to get a job in high school. Feels so special. So
sexy.”

The door opened, and Vero’s mom, Maria, walked
in, back from mass. She was short and wide and wore a crimson dress
that contrasted with the faded paint and dull stains on the walls.
Her mouth parted into a huge smile.

“
How’s my girls?” She hugged both
of them. “My early riser slept in. What happened with Pieter last
night?”

“
A mess,” Vero said. Her toast
popped out. She put it on a plate, buttered it, and started
nibbling. “Glad it’s over.”

“
It’s over with Pieter?” Her mom
sounded hopeful.

“
No, I mean, last night’s over. He
made me hang out with a lame friend of his.”

“
And what’s up with that
axe?”

Her mom hadn’t been awake the night before when
Vero came home. Bella must have said something about the axe. “Um…
Pieter gave it to me.”

“
Pieter? What?”

“
Well, no, it was his friend,
Neil.” That would make a better explanation. “He’s a… a really big
nerd. It had something to do with a… a video game. What am I
supposed to do with something like that?”

Maria stared blankly. “An axe? You stay away
from that kid. He’s weird.”

Vero would have loved to do exactly
that.

Her mom pulled out a chair and sat at the
table. “Did I ever tell you what Juan got me our first Christmas?”
She had, actually. “A chainsaw. A chainsaw! What’s your
madre
going to do with a chainsaw?”

As she launched into the story, Vero’s mind
drifted. She’d just lied to her mom. It wasn’t a first, but if
everything James said were true, she was stepping into a whole new
level of deceit. The idea settled at the bottom of her stomach like
a cheap cheeseburger.

After breakfast and some sitting around the
house, ---Vero found herself overlooking potholed streets on a
cracked plastic chair on the front porch. Pieter still hadn’t
returned her texts. She called him.

“
Hello?”

“
Where you been?”

“
Uhn, asleep. What time…” Muffled
sounds of movement came through the phone. “Whoa. Twelve
thirty?”

“
You just wake up?”

“
Yeah. Feel like I got hit by a
bus.”

“
Me, too. Get over here,” Vero
said.

“
Gimme a minute. I need a shower…
I’ll pick you up from your place.”

“
I’ll be out front.”

He paused. Did he suspect about her house?
“Sure. Out front, then. And bring your thing.”

“
I’m not carrying that out of my
house.”

“
Fine. Okay. See you in
twenty.”

After a little wait, Vero walked out of the
mobile home park and stood in front of the house around the
corner—the one with the mailbox planted in the cement. She paced up
and down the street, unable to stand still. What were they supposed
to do? Why did James think
they
could fight his war? More
importantly, was Jed already looking for them, and did he have a
way to find them?

The White Lady pulled up along the
curb.

“
Finally,” she said, stepping
inside the car.

Pieter yawned. “Sorry. Took longer than I
thought. You want to go to Carlos’s place? I’m starved.”

Vero smelled pot on him. She wrinkled her nose
and rolled down the window. “Sure. Downtown sounds nice right
now.”

The car seemed to inch along the road, to get
accosted by every red light. She wanted to get out, to hold hands,
to embrace, even to just talk about what had happened. Vero moved
her hands back and forth from her lap to the window to her sides,
her questions a swarm of mosquitoes inside her mind.

After shifting gears, Pieter put a hand on her
thigh. “Nothing to worry about.”

Some of the mosquitoes vanished. “Easy
words.”

“
You prefer hard words? We’re
completely screwed. Totally, completely screwed. That
better?”

She smiled and gave a low laugh. When he took
his hand away to change gears, she silently cursed his manual
transmission.

They parked on the roof of the downtown parking
structure. Vero and Pieter walked along the asphalt toward the
elevator, dodging periodic cars.

“
Pieter, I…”

“
Yeah?”

“
Last night, I mean, what do
we…”

They stopped outside the elevator. It was a
gorgeous day. At three stories up, they stood on one of the highest
buildings in the city. Downtown looked almost like a forest, trees
sprouting from planters in the sidewalks. Bishop’s Peak and Mount
Madonna towered in the distance, their shadows lengthening along
the town. Golden hills surrounded the city, their grasses waiting
for winter rains to bring life.

Pieter pulled his arm tight around her waist.
“It’ll be okay.”

“
That mean you have a plan,
or…”

“
Sure. Enjoy you. Go to school.
Graduate. Go somewhere fun for college. Get a great job. Be
happy.”

“
Umm… so… the whole Ruach thing?
Another dimension? War?”

Pieter’s voice sped up a little. “You hear me
agree to a war last night?”

“
No.”

“
So, where’s the fun in a
resistance? I could think of about a million better things to do
with my time.”

“
But the prince,
Terian…”

“
The guy doesn’t even know how to
get to our world. James opened the portal, not the bad guys. And
even if Terian does figure it out, we pay taxes for a reason.
Swords and spears against U.S. fighter jets? Good luck.”

Vero’s breathing slowed. Pieter could face the
worst parts of life with a smile. He’d slept all morning while
she’d worried. She wanted to be as carefree as he was, wanted to
believe that last night wouldn’t destroy her life as she knew
it.

“
You think it could be that easy?”
she asked.

“
I don’t see a reason to make it
otherwise, you?”

Tension in her shoulders released. Images of
blood and battle faded. They stood in silence for a moment,
listening to the gentle business of the city.

“
You hear what happened after we
left?” Vero asked.

“
Neil texted me. The police took a
report, searched the area, then let them leave. Neil and Gloria
might get called to testify, but the cops don’t even know that the
two of us were there. There’s nothing to tie us to this
thing.”

“
And James?”

“
An ambulance took him away, but he
was pronounced dead on the spot.”

He’d died on another world, far from friends
and family. She
should
feel sad, but relief came instead. He
hadn’t asked their permission before bursting into their world.
Pieter was right: They didn’t owe James a thing. She felt a bit
guilty about the relief though.

“
You’re quiet,” Pieter said. “You
want to save the world or something?”

“
No, I don’t,” Vero replied. “Not
if it’s like last night at least. Didn’t seem quite as glamorous as
the movies.”