Rivals

Rivals Page 8

"No, no, no, you didn't," Lucy said, cradling Brent's head against her chest. She ran one hand over his hair, over and over. "You couldn't possibly have."

He was crying openly now. The events of the last week had totally undercut any idea he ever had about being a tough guy. "He said it wasn't safe, that we should probably just leave. And it was so weird in there - I could barely hear his voice. It was the last thing he ever said to me! And then I found that well or - or whatever it was. It was closed off, there was a lid on top. But it looked kind of loose, and I thought I wanted to see if there was anything inside. I don't know what I expected to find. But when the lid came off there was something green and glowing down there and it was getting bigger - like it was coming up from a long way down, coming up really fast."

Lucy kissed him on the top of his head. Which was a little weird but he didn't mind. It felt kind of good.

"Dad came rushing up behind me. He was shouting but there was no sound at all, everything was perfectly silent. He looked down into the well and then he grabbed the lid and tried to put it back on but - but it was too late. It was just too late. He was on fire, he was..."

"You didn't do anything."

"Yes, exactly! I didn't stop him! I didn't even try!"

"No, no, no, no," Lucy said again, and pressed her lips against his forehead. There was so much comfort in that kiss. It was amazing how good it felt just to have a friend right then. "You didn't know. You couldn't possibly know."

"Oh my God, Luce, it was so horrible. He - he melted while I watched. I would have stayed there and just watched and probably got killed myself if Maggie hadn't come along. She saved me. If I'd been as smart as her, or as fast, maybe I could have - I could have done something for Dad."

"No, no, no, no," Lucy repeated. "It wasn't your fault." She sat down next to him, so close their thighs were touching, and wrapped her arms around him. She held him tight while he shook and cried and got it out of his system.

"Now he's gone," Brent said. "I don't know what to do. Everything is different - I can't talk to Grandma about this stuff. I keep thinking about what Dad would want me to do with these new powers. He would want me to do good things, I think. If I do good things, if I help people, maybe that'll make up a little for killing him. Do you think so?"

"Shh," she said. "You didn't kill him. And I think he'd be proud of you whatever you do. I heard him say that like, a million times."

When his sobbing had slowed down a little, when he wasn't sucking in breath that he couldn't seem to swallow, he turned slightly in her arms and looked up at her. She was smiling bravely. Like she wanted to show him she didn't think he was a bad person. It meant so much, to see her smile like that, her face just a few inches away from his. Her mouth so close to his. He leaned in just a little closer, and she did, too.

"You rock, Lucy," he breathed.

"Thanks," she said. One of her hands tangled in the hair on the back of his head and she started pulling him even closer. Their lips grazed each other and he felt her braces underneath.

He pulled back hurriedly. He had just almost kissed her! That wasn't cool. Desperately, he tried to think of something to say that would smooth over what had just happened. "Best friends forever, that's what the girls say, right? BFFs?" he asked her.

He didn't understand the look in her eyes. It was hopeful and terrified and lost and disappointed and burning with triumph all at the same time. He had no idea what she was thinking, or feeling.

Then she lifted her arms away from him and reached for her leg braces. "I have to go home," she said. "I forgot that I have to get dinner ready tonight, Mom is working late and if I don't get the pork chops started right now my Dad isn't going to have anything to eat, and he'll just laugh, and then he'll say forget the pork chops let's order a pizza, which would normally be cool, except his cholesterol is up again and the doctor says he can't have any cheese, and anyway I can't eat pizza because it makes me break out but I want you to know, I'm totally your BFF, and I will always be here for you if you want to, to, to talk, yes, to talk, or you know, just hang out. Chill. Be cool, together, just two friends hanging, we don't even have to talk, we can just be quiet sometime and see how long that lasts which, you know perfectly well, for me is not going to be that long. But we could try that."

"Thanks," he told her, as she hobbled out the door. She didn't reply or even look back. He really hoped he hadn't screwed things up by nearly kissing her. It wasn't like they'd ever thought of each other that way before but she was a girl and he was a teenage boy and sometimes you couldn't help yourself, and -

"Oh God," he thought. "What if I made her feel so uncomfortable she won't be my friend anymore?"

A scratching sound on his window scared him half to death. He jumped up and ran to the window, throwing it open to see what was outside. It was Maggie, crouched on the roof looking in at him. She had a lot of eye makeup on and it made her eyes look huge.

"You're not the smartest brother anyone ever had, are you?" Maggie asked. "And you don't understand other people at all."

"If you wanted to insult me you could have just come to my door," Brent told her. He climbed through the window and into the chilly night air. You could see half the neighborhood from up there, rows of two-story houses curling in on themselves on meandering dead-end roads. In the distance the mall was a smudge of light on the dark blue horizon. "When was the last time we were up here?" he asked, feeling like the roof had gotten steeper or maybe his center of gravity had changed. It didn't feel nearly as stable as it used to. "Before Mom died, I know, but how old were we?"

"When I was your age." Maggie skipped easily up the slope of the roof to stand on the very top of the house. "That's probably how long it's been since we did anything together without complaining about it."

"Without you complaining about it," he corrected her. He wished she would come down from there. He didn't want her to fall. He didn't want to lose another family member for some stupid reason that didn't make any sense. "Why did we stop hanging out together, anyway?"

She shrugged. Then she stood up slowly on the toes of one foot, balancing herself by stretching out her arms. "I guess we didn't have anything in common. But now we do again." Then she dropped to a crouch, pumped her legs - and sailed out across the darkness towards the roof of the house across the street. He could just hear her call back, "You're it!"