18 – Heart to Heart
Tony crumpled up his wrapper and tossed it to the left where a plastic trash can stood, zip-tied to a piece of fencing—one of Boxer’s futile efforts to keep the Boxer Day celebrations from making too much of a mess in the district. Addie watched Tony unwrap another taco; they’d gotten a sampling from four different trucks. He reached into the paper sack and took out a little salsa container, this one bright orange, and drizzled a little on the taco where he intended to take a bite.
Addie winced. “That one’s really hot!”
Her words didn’t slow him, and he took a big, crunching bite. He grinned as he chewed, and Addie watched as his eye began to water, and he grabbed an ice cube out of his cup of cola to rub on his split lip. “Oof!” Addie winced again, this time in sympathy. “I bet that stings!”
Tony swallowed his bite, grimacing, and nodded. “Yeah, forgot about that.” He held up the taco. “I like this better than the last one.”
“Yeah, I think Sammy’s is one of the better trucks. He sets up down by the NGT tower and has lines all day.”
“We should go again.” He said it so casually—like it was a given that they’d be going out to eat again—that Addie couldn’t help smiling and nodding. Despite her internal objections, she couldn’t deny it was nice to have someone to hang out with again. She sipped her cola and watched him finish his taco. He switched out the habanero salsa with something milder and tried to avoid the cut on his lip. It was pretty funny to watch, so she didn’t try to hide the smile stretching her lips.
Between bites, he asked, “Which one was your favorite?”
“The, um, carnitas with the lime salsa.”
He nodded. “I think I had one of those. It was good—”
“You had two!” Addie laughed. She’d seen people who could put away a lot of food. She’d watched Beef slurp down a massive cheesy pizza while his two cronies watched with wide eyes and drooling mouths. Even so, Tony’s appetite after fighting was admirable. He said it was the nanites accelerating his healing; his body needed fuel. She was pretty sure he was just used to eating a lot more than he had in the last few days. “So? You’re going to see about your eye next?”
“Yeah, but if it’s too much, I’ll probably buy a cheap data port and an older-model PAI.”
“JJ’s getting pretty old, but I think he gets the job done.”
“Thank you, Addie, I—”
“Hush, JJ.”
Tony snorted, shaking his head, smiling crookedly to spare his lip. “He’s a character, huh?” Before Addie could respond, he held up a finger. “Hey! You were late to my fights!”
Addie looked down at her last half-eaten taco. She’d felt full a few minutes ago and decided not to finish it, but watching him eat made her want another bite. She nodded as she scooped it up, carefully keeping the loose, fresh-chopped pico de gallo from spilling out. “Yeah, sorry about that, Tony. I got distracted at an, uh, event. Then Jamal messaged me, and I went to meet him real quick. To be fair, you started way earlier than you told me you would.”
“Yeah, fair. What event?”
Addie took a bite, inhaling through her nose while she chewed and mulled over how much she wanted to tell him. Was she ready to start talking about her…fading situation? Maybe not that far, but she could broach the topic a little. She swallowed her bite and reached across the table for the habanero salsa Tony had set aside. “I saw a guy who everyone was calling a spark. He was doing magic tricks.”
“Yeah?” Tony watched her pour a generous dollop of the orange-tinted salsa on her last bite, his eye crinkling with amusement. Still, he didn’t say anything, didn’t try to warn her, or remark about how spicy it was. Addie liked that, even though she’d done the opposite.
Before she took the bite, she said, “He was the real deal, I think. He even, like, turned off gravity in the audience.” She stuffed the last of her taco into her mouth, savoring the soft tortilla's slightly greasy texture as it soothed the tastebuds set alight by the salsa. Tony didn’t respond; he was busy watching her chew, and Addie was sure she could see the little muscles on the sides of his jaw clenching and unclenching as he watched. Was he clenching in time with her chews?
As she swallowed, he pushed her cup of soda closer, and Addie smiled, taking a long, deep gulp of the fizzy stuff. “Thanks.”
“I love watching people eat.” He shrugged almost apologetically.
“I do, too!” Addie laughed. “Anyway, that spark had some interesting things to say to me.”
“Yeah?”
Addie nodded. “Make you a deal.”
“Oh?” Tony leaned forward, resting his chin on his fist, the left side of his mouth curling into a smile.
“I’ll tell you something interesting about the spark and me, but then I get to ask you a question.”
“Ah,” Tony leaned back, slowly shaking his head. “That sounds like trouble. If you feel like it’s something we gotta make a deal for, then you must think I probably won’t want to answer—”
“Come on, Tony!” Addie sighed. “I’m just trying to get to know you a little.”
Tony drummed his fingers on the table. “Tell you what. I’ll agree, but then we get to play again, and we both ask a question.”
Addie narrowed her eyes. What did he have in mind? She shrugged. “Okay, fine. So, I’ll start by telling you something interesting, and then I get to ask first.”
Tony nodded. “Right.”
“So, when the spark did his big trick, I saw weird, glittering, misty sparkles flying out of his hands, and, later, when we were talking, he said that meant I was probably at least a gleam. Then, like you, he noticed how I operate Humpty—” Addie patted her backpack. “—and said he’d bet I was probably a spark. Actually, his words were, ‘at least a spark,’ as if there were people who could do a lot more, you know?”
Of course, as soon as she mentioned she could see the “misty sparkles,” Tony had begun grinning again, so much so that he’d reached up with his fingers to pinch his lower lip, trying to keep from stretching his cut. “I told you. Anyway, that’s cool. Nothing wrong with it, I mean. You and your dad were acting kinda funny about the whole subject, so I dropped it, but I knew the way you were flying that Dust-tech that there was something more to it.”
“Well, it might not be a big deal to you, but I’m still freaking out a little right now. I only spoke to him a couple of hours ago, but it feels like it’s been a week—like, my mind’s been racing down all sorts of avenues. I think that’s why I brought it up, in case I seem spacy.”
“Sis, I just got punched in the head about twenty times. You think I can recognize spacy?”
Addie snorted a soft laugh, but then she squinted at him, really looking at him for a moment. The split on his lip was a lot smaller than when she’d seen him after his fight. Wasn’t it? “You’ve got some primo nanites, don’t you?”
Tony arched an eyebrow. “That’s your question?”
Addie hurriedly waved a hand. “No! No, no. Don’t answer that!”
“Sure?” The way he asked made Addie hesitate. Was there some kind of interesting story about those nanites? Or was he trying to draw her away from more sensitive topics?
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
She grinned and shook her head. “I’m sure. My question is, basically, what’s the deal with you? How’d you end up in the Blast? I get you were stripped and dumped, but, like, if someone’s willing to do that to you, why wouldn’t they kill you? Why would they leave a guy like you alive?”
“A guy like me?”
Addie nodded. “Dangerous.”
Tony hurriedly grabbed his lower lip again as his grin widened. “Oof!” he grunted, shaking his head. “You should know better than to call a guy ‘dangerous’—our egos can only take so much stroking before—”
“Oh, hush!” Addie reached for her cola. “Come on, quit stalling and answer me. You know what I mean.”
“All right. ‘What’s my deal?’ Huh. Well, see, Addie, when I woke up down here, and your lovely friend Beef greeted me with a choice—work for him or die—I found that, deep down, I still wanted to live. I know that sounds a little dumb. Who wouldn’t want to live, right? Well, when I woke up, I was pretty sure I was done. Like, I didn’t want to deal with it. I just wanted the misery to end. I don’t mean this stuff.” Tony pointed to his cybernetic arm and his tape-covered eye. “I mean everything—things in here—” He pressed his palm to his chest, tapping his fingers. “—things I don’t want to remember.”
“Oh…” Addie’s voice was soft as she spoke, and she looked down. She wouldn’t press him. She wouldn’t make him go somewhere that had made him feel like dying. She felt embarrassed and knew her cheeks were flaring with it. Why hadn’t she thought of that? He’d been nearly killed and abandoned in a very dangerous part of the city. Did that sound like a story someone would want to relive while eating tacos with a near-total stranger? “I’m sorr—”
“Nah, I’m not saying that to shut you down or make you feel bad. I’m telling you that because it was an important point in my life, and it has a lot to do with what I will and won’t tell you. You see, when I decided I wanted to live, that I’d be willing to submit to a two-bit street thug… Well, when I made that decision, I had to put some things away, like deep, deep down. Things had happened to me, all right, things that, taken all together, were too much for me to function with. I either wanted to die or go on a murderous rampage—both, really.”
Tony patted his chest like he was looking for something in a breast pocket, and, finding nothing there, he smirked and shook his head, chagrin plain on his face. After a few seconds’ pause, he started talking again. “In my shape, a rampage wouldn’t do much good. It was the same thing as suicide. I’d already decided I wanted to live, so I locked away the things that made me feel that way. Like, seriously, I put ’em away deep, and every time my conscious mind starts drifting that way, I see that big locked door and steer it back where it needs to be. Right here—” He nodded at Addie. “—in the present.”
“Wait. Are you seriously taking like ten minutes to tell me that you aren’t going to answer my question?”
“Nah, I’m getting to it. You asked why they’d let me live—why they’d throw me down here, alive and a potential threat. Well, the truth is they know me pretty damn well. I’m rather certain they expected me to flare out down here. It wasn’t that they were too chicken to pull the trigger. The thing is, they wanted it to hurt me here.” Again, Tony tapped his fingers on his chest. “They wanted me humiliated and to know crushing defeat as I failed to get back at them. Or, they wanted me to wake up, look at what they took from me, and just end it. Either way, I’m worse off than if they’d just given me a quick death.”
Addie narrowed her eyes, thinking about his words. What would such betrayal feel like? What would it feel like to have friends—Addie got the feeling they’d been friends—take everything away from you and, worse, want you to suffer for it? “I’m sorry, Tony,” was the only thing she could think of to say, and she hated how ineffectual the words were.
“Hey, things have looked up since I met you and your pops—nothin’ for you to feel sorry for.” He folded his arms and leaned back a little. “My turn?”
“Well, I wanted to ask a follow-up. Is that allowed?” Addie tried to look non-threatening, twirling her straw around in the half-full cup of cola.
“Shoot.”
“Do you think you’re going to? I mean, do you think those…people who did that to you were right? Are you going to flare out?” As she finished speaking, Addie looked up and locked her eyes on his. His eye socket was deep and shadowed by his angled brow, always on the verge of a scowl in its resting position. She liked it when he smiled, and the little lines at the corners crinkled up; he looked like a different person. Her question, unfortunately, didn’t make him smile.
“I dunno.” He shrugged. “I pushed all that shit into a locked door, remember? Right now, I’m just going day by day. Today, I earned some bits, and right now, I’m enjoying some tacos with a cool chick. That’s as far as I’m looking ahead right now.”
Addie smiled. “You think I’m cool?”
“Hell yeah! Thousand ways you could burn out in a district like this, but you’re trying to do something real. Not much cooler than that.” As Addie once again felt her cheeks getting hot, he leaned closer to the table, arching his only visible eyebrow. “So? My turn?”
“Okay, go ahead.” Addie mimicked his earlier posture and folded her arms over her chest.
“You won’t get upset if it’s a little personal?”
“Um,” Addie wondered what he could want to know about. Was he going to ask about her last boyfriend or something? Was he about to hit on her? Would she be okay with that? He’d pretty much just admitted that he was one bad day away from ending it all, so that didn’t exactly qualify him as boyfriend material. She realized she was stalling and he was staring, so she just shrugged. “I won’t get upset.”
“Tell me about what’s up with you and Maisie.”
“Oh, dammit!” Addie felt like she’d just been hit with a left hook. Hadn’t she seen this coming? Hadn’t she lamented the fact that the one person in the entire district who had a genuine reason to hate her was hanging around with Tony? Of course Maisie had mentioned their problems. She realized she was leaning forward, cradling her head, when she felt Tony’s rubber-padded plasteel fingers gently grip her shoulder.
“Hey, looks like I went too far. Forget it, all right?”
“No.” Addie looked up, shaking her head. On the bright side, she wasn’t crying, and she’d stopped blushing. She felt a little angry and a little detached, but, in another way, she was eager to confess her shameful behavior. She’d never told anyone about it, and it weighed heavily on her. “Fair’s fair. I was pretty rotten to her a few years back.”
Tony pulled his hand back, and Addie was a little surprised by how she sort of wished he hadn’t. He let his hard, plasteel forearm rest on the table, then leaned on it so he had to look up at her as she spoke. “You see, she was dating a good friend of mine, and when he got killed, I blamed her. It was irrational and mean, and I hated myself for doing it, but the feelings were there, twisting my guts every night. I wanted the world to suffer for his death, but the only person I could affect was Maisie. I had the perfect weapon—a note Simon had given me a little while before he died. It said he’d always wanted to be more than friends with me, you see?”
“Yeah, I see.” Tony’s voice was soft, but she didn’t hear any judgment in his tone, at least not yet.
“So, I gave it to her. I found her at a park and handed it to her. I immediately felt guilty, so I hugged her and ran. I never really spoke to her again.”
“So you were hurting, and you lashed out. Not a cool thing to do, but we’ve all done things like it. It’s too bad you aren’t sisters.”
“What?” Addie’s voice rose an octave in befuddled outrage.
“I mean, you don’t live close enough together to be forced to reconcile. You’ve both carried this burden separately—each of you dreading contact with the other. If you were sisters, your dad would’ve knocked your heads together by now, and you would have worked it out.”
“Is that how it is with siblings?”
“Honestly, yeah. I mean, with me, it was an uncle. Usually, he’d never got involved. Ray and I fought it out after a few days of cold shoulders.”
“Is that your brother? Ray?” The question seemed innocent and perfectly fair game, considering he’d mentioned the name, but Tony’s eye clouded over, and he scowled, shaking his head.
“Not anymore.” He stood abruptly. “How about we take a walk? Let’s cool off from all that hot sauce and check out some booths and stuff.”
Addie clambered to her feet, grunting as her foot got caught on the strut between the bench and the picnic table. “Hey, but you owe me one more answer.”
Tony stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Let me owe it to you, ’kay?”
Considering how he’d refrained from judging her about a confession she’d been dreading, Addie was feeling charitable. “Yeah, okay.” As she followed him out of the food truck alley, she realized she felt much more than charitable. She was feeling relieved and grateful and amazed that she’d confessed one of the worst things she’d ever done, and Tony’s only response was to say how everyone had done similar things. She hurried up and grabbed his elbow, surprised by how hard the muscles felt under his tracksuit jacket. He slowed and looked down at her.
“What’s up?”
“Hey, um. I just wanted to say thanks. It feels good to share that with someone. I never have before.”
Tony smiled a real, genuine smile and stretched his arm over her shoulders, pulling her into his side. “Not a problem, Ads.” He squeezed her for a couple of seconds before letting go. “Not a problem at all.” It felt so nice that she didn’t complain about the lingering odor of sweat and blood in the fabric of his tracksuit or that he’d used a nickname she didn’t exactly like. When he released her, he nodded toward Dino’s Chrome Warehouse. “Wanna go in there with me? Maybe they’ve got a deal on something I need.”
“Sure, Tony. Let’s check it out.” For the second or third time that night, Addie thought about how she liked being with him. He had an easy manner and never seemed flustered or out of sorts. He was a fish out of water down there, but no one would ever know it from his behavior. She liked hanging out with him, so much so that she hadn’t thought about finding her dad like she usually ended up doing at events like that one.
It was a nice feeling, but underneath it, Addie was already starting to build up some anxieties: was Tony going to try to get revenge on the people who hurt him? Was he going to “flare out” in the Blast? Was Maisie going to poison him against her? Beneath those worries were new kinds of fears: would her Dust sensitivity continue to change her? Would she be forced to seek help from someone like Zane or the “recruiter” he knew at Boxer? Would all of that get in the way of her dream of exposing the corruption in the Blast?
It was a lot to worry about, and Addie wasn’t the kind of person who could stuff her problems down and forget them. The best she could manage was to put them on hold for a little while as she tried to enjoy the rest of the evening. So, with that goal in mind, she forced herself to focus on the sights, sounds, and smells of Boxer Day before the district went back to normal in the morning.