Velli

We drop Dream off first. I was close to kissing her good night, but Lue remarked three times in a matter of one minute how cold it was. Lue further emasculates me by cradling me like a baby as she flies. However, after a big win like that, I can let it go and enjoy the breeze that comes with flight.

We do finally reach my house, and the victorious high leaves.

“Is it here?” Lue asks in a sort of whisper. Her attitude since Dream’s drop-off still has not returned.

“Yeah,” I say and regret it. I planned to make her do some extra laps so I could enjoy the moment more instead of staying in that stuffy house. The sadness in her voice ripped a chunk of honesty from me, I guess.

She doesn’t dive down with the same speed she did for Dream. Instead, she makes a small circle in the air, bringing us lower. She repeats the process, making smaller and smaller, lower and lower circles until we finally land.

I hop out of her arms. Letting her lower me to the ground like a damsel in distress is a bit too much.

“Thanks,” she says.

I nod and consider giving her a hug, a fist bump, or some sort of physical goodbye. Nah, she made Dream cry. She’s someone else’s problem now. Huh, back to my haunted mansion, I suppose.

“Excuse me,” she says louder than she’s talked before and still with evident humility. “May I sleep here for the night?”

I’m not the most vengeful guy, but—

That’s not true.

Fine, that’s not true. Anyway, the worst thing about being vengeful is being powerless. I used to get tortured in elementary school by the kids who got their powers early. I used to think about how I would get them back, that one day, for some reason, they would need a pencil or something and I’d be the only one who had an extra. They would be on their knees, begging, “Please, can I borrow one?” and I would whisper, “No.”

Weirdo.

Go through what I went through, then judge me.

I’m sure my face says what I think, because when I spin to look at her, her eyes drop. Sort of pitiful—really pitiful—so instead of saying something clever to send her away crying, I only say, “No, I don’t think that would be for the best.”

“Where will I go, then?” Her foot taps in a nervous rhythm.

“Home, I guess. To all those friends you like to gossip with about Dream.”

“They don’t want to see me.”

Oh, I can’t believe I have to do this. The girl’s practically Shakespearean with her drama for making me give her the “your friends will love you no matter what” speech.

“Listen, Lue…” I feel like a youth pastor. “Your friends—”

“Please, Velli, stop calling them that.” Her voice cracks. This is the most frustrated she’s been all night. Well, that makes two of us. “I don’t have any friends,” she corrects.

“Then, what was all that business to Dream about making fun of her to people?”

“To get her to come rescue me without having to beg.”

“What happened to your friends?”

“They’re still out there. They knew too. They just didn’t come. They knew exactly what was happening. My friends, my family, everyone I trusted. They knew exactly what was happening, and they pretended they didn’t. How could I ever go back to them?”

“The wonderful power of flight” is not what I say. I only think because I get it. Abandoned by everybody she loved. Everybody who was supposed to be there for her. That’s one of my greatest fears. All I can do is stutter a slow, questionable “I-I-I—”

“Please, Velli.” She ups her charm. Her full lips pout, and she adds extra sway in her hips as she comes forward. She’s no Dream. She’s something more. Something about this is dark. My heart races. After what she did to Dream and the vulnerable state she’s in, she needs a friend and therapy, not whatever this is.

Lue places her hand on the right side of my chest, and I don’t stop her. She’s a couple of inches taller than I am, and those inches melt away as she lowers herself to rest her bruised and beautiful skin against my neck. Her swollen cheek against my chest whispers that she needs a break, needs a friend, anyone to care about her as a person and not see her as an object. I press against her stomach to push her off. With surprising strength from her or weakness from me, she grabs my hands and guides them lower. I rip them free and grab her wrist.

Lue flinches, and despite all her efforts to pretend this is about something else, it’s still there. She’s hurt. Like me. Like all my friends. Like Amelia. Despite our differences. We’re all a bunch of idiots who make rash decisions to feel better.

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“Velli.” Lue doesn’t even whisper in my ear. She’s found the perfect volume to sing my name in a deep, provocative voice that Dream could never do. “I will do whatever you want. Dream doesn’t have to know yet.” The blasphemy in that statement makes me mad enough to squeeze her wrist. “I will do whatever you want.” Her guise of seduction fades. It’s all desperation now—the need to feel something. “I will swear by my name and do as you say.”

A flash of inspiration hits. Between her and Jeremy, I would almost be ready to go. They’re both borderline suicidal. With the way life goes, they both might end up taking their own lives without my persuasion. Why waste their lives?

I let go of her wrist, and I hate the smile that crosses my face, or maybe I don’t because I don’t try to stop it. Something evil and comforting rises from my stomach, crawls through my throat, snakes across my tongue, and comes out in words. “Whatever I want?” I tease.

She sees it. She sees this is how she can get what she wants. Again, the same thing I want. The same thing I get denied—the feeling that someone really loves her.

“Yes, Velli. Yes, ask, and I’ll do it. No limits, whatever you like, and it’ll be our secret.”

It’s the easiest thing in the world to raise her chin and bring her to her full height. Her guarded, intimidating presence is gone. Now, it’s only submission. It’s the easiest thing in the world to ask her to swear by her name to obey every order I give her for as long as she lives. It’s the easiest thing in the world to tell her to walk inside, and I watch from behind as she swishes her perfect hips. There’s no rush, no more pressure. I’ve won. Her shoulder would glide against my chest as she passes me, giving me a whiff of her hair, which smells like I imagine heaven would.

It would be the most relieving thing in the world to have her walk through my house and go straight to my room. I wouldn’t have to fear her judgment. She would be mine to command. No more lies, no more need to impress her.

I won’t do it.

She’s another idiot trying to make herself feel better. I’ll never hurt anyone who wants to do that. Even with my hands moving slowly, she flinches, and every muscle on her tightens. I hug her as lightly as I can. She doesn’t reciprocate.

The girl doesn’t want a hug. She said what she wanted. You’re not man enough to give it to her. You—

She hugs back. Fate talks, and it doesn’t matter.

Lue sniffs twice. “What kind of person am I that no one cared?”

I don’t answer. I don’t know.

“What about my parents? What about my dad? He’s supposed to protect me. I’m his only daughter. How evil am I? Because I would never do that. No matter how bad things got, I would never do that. I loved them. They knew, and they let it go. I was alone and crying on the phone to them, and they let it go. Why didn’t anyone care? I know what I am. I know what I am. I know what I am. I know what I am.” Her cries grow deeper every time she speaks it, and her tears bleed through my shirt. “I think that’s why Wulf picked me. I thought it was because I was so pretty, but I think he knew they would all abandon me. Please, please, don’t leave me. I don’t want to be alone. Velli, I swear by my—”

I push her off me and cover her mouth with my hand.

“Don’t finish that,” I warn.

Her eyes beg—red, shaky things.

I don’t have the words. What can I say that’s true? What can I say to someone who was truly abandoned by everyone they loved and maybe—this is my evilest thought—it was their fault? Nothing. So I remove my hand from her mouth, a slow slide across her lips.

I take her by her hand and bring her to sit on the steps at the entrance to my home. We sit in silence, and when we speak, it’s between bouts of heavy crying sessions. She speaks of her childhood, her best moments, her worst moments, and her friends, living and dead. Stories I will never forget and never tell a soul.

“You can have my bed tonight.” I rise once the conversation reaches its natural end.

She flinches again, but it’s smaller this time.

“I’ll take the couch.”

“Thanks,” she whispers.

“You can stay as long as you like.”

“That’s very nice.” Her voice is hoarse from all the crying.

I touch the doorknob and prepare to open it.

Division’s soles, Velli. The girl’s gone through hell, and this is what you bring her to. This is a horror scene. This might end up doing more damage than anything Wulf could do.

Maybe I can show her somewhere else. Maybe I can get a hotel room for her to stay in. My fingers clench with guilt. They tap against the doorknob and grope for an excuse for why she can’t come in and see the disgust that is my life, my house.

I do find the excuse—something about Dream and how she might be jealous. Then I imagine telling a girl who poured her heart out to me to stay out of my house because I’m afraid to show her more about my life. I see her heart, and it tears in the same places it just stitched together.

You do that to Dream all the time.

I do. And that’s awful. I refuse to let Dream into certain parts of my life because of old hurts. However, Dream has let me into all of hers. I bet that hurts her like it hurts Lue. I can change all of that starting here. With a deep breath, I open the door to my home. The home I have never let a single friend into.

The walls bulge from both sides, literally closing in on us. They swell like boils, except instead of pus, they are filled with oxygen. The house breathes. It rattles my mom’s family pictures in its expansion, and the wallpaper rips from the pressure.

The lumps on the wall still grow bigger, dominating the space in the hallway. Lue shrinks away from it. The lumps have a gross liquid look to them, liquidity like human organs but not human organs because, after all, this is a house. The orbs get closer, and heat exudes from them. I don’t shrink away. I’m used to it.

The house groans silently, but it’s apparent. The lumps shrink then flatten. They’ll be back, though, like lungs, like breathing. In and out. In and out.

That’s how the house was sold to my mom and me. Cheap property, though—relatively. Not worth much. And of course, it’s my fault we live here.

“A living house!” Our landlord saw how excited I was when I said that to my mom as a middle schooler. We needed cheap housing after my dad died, and we were running out of options. I’m sure he raised the price an extra hundred drops a month when he saw how excited we were. When he said living, I thought he meant “living.” A house that coddled its inhabitants, a house that sassed its inhabitants, or even a silly evil house that played pranks on its inhabitants would have been preferable. This house just breathes and works. That’s not life.

It’s embarrassing to have the cheapest house available, a disgusting thing that even many of the homeless would turn down. Lue doesn’t. She gives an understanding shrug, and I show her to my room. I leave her there, not before she gives me a hug.

The house hushes. Lue snores, and I snuggle on the couch, knowing she will be well rested. Understanding I did a good thing.

Someone knocks on the door.

“Hello, boy,” the Old Soul says in my head.