This chapter was broken up into two. This is also a turning point, a BIG turning point in the whole story that I think you all will like?
"So, since you say you think I'm the one who took all your...emotions and memories and whatnot, can you tell me what assistant had been by my side at the time? Maybe that can jog my memory—-"
"That is of little importance. It is you, solely you, who stole my feelings and emotions and memories. Your assistant was just a show monkey."
"Was that a literal show monkey, or..."
Pietro shakes his head. Rainy's deaden, assertive expression doesn't waver.
Halil, Wish Granter, shrugs it off, reaches for a hookah pipe on a small table beside his pillow seat. "Well, can you tell me a memory? I see many clients, you know." Inhales from the pipe.
Rainy shows him the photo in her locket again, holding the necklace by the chain, dangling a mouse in front of a cat. "This woman here. I don't have any memories of her anymore."
The Wish Granter thinks. "Seems familiar... I tell you, you're one of the fortunate ones."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Memories are vast. They change shape and deform and reconstruct easily and quicker than imagined. We can alter them subconsciously and re-imagine what has never happens, effortlessly. To have a perfect memory is rare. It's a gift, a talent."
"Talent?" Pietro blurts before realizing.
"Yes. And not unlike those who can lift fifty times their weight or fly or perform other seeming impossible feats—in my opinion. Like the Madam Polinski who foresaw your arrival." He's referring to the two-heads fortuneteller.
Pietro's eyes widen.
Talent
Mutants
"To be able to see other's memories is another talent that not many possess. Do you have any special talents, young lady?"
"That is a pointless question, isn't it?"
Halil looks to the other teen. "How about you, young man?"
Pietro bites his lip. His fingers fidget. Curl, unclench. "No," he lies. He hops that this so-calls wish-granter couldn't detect lies either.
Halil turns back to the stolid-faced one. "Well, you didn't become this way by accident, just in the result of something. Your...perspective's just changed, is all." He's saying this all very lightheartedly. He takes a drag from the hookah pipe, exhaling the smoke through his nostrils.
"Perspective? What are you trying to say?"
The man draws another lungful, exhaling it as he talks. "I'm saying that your oh so pitiful look is bothering me, miss."
The last thing Pietro would have described Rainy as is pitiful. And looks nervously back and forth between the two, noticing that Halil has barely blinked, and fearful for what Rainy will say, of something disrespectful she could say. The pseudo-shaman did so only once as he and Rainy study each other, not exactly glaring but not exactly testing either.
Finally, the man closes his eyes. His bald head gleams in the candlelight and his blonde eyebrows are almost invisible. "Most people would become unnerved—like your classmate here. And honestly, I thought you were just a spoiled little miss." She asks why he thinks so. Halil replies: "a lot of the people who come to see me are. Either spoiled or very privileged. These procedures don't usually last this long. Not commonly. I never really made sure or not. But then again, I don't usually run into past clients. Regardless, if this can be reversed or not, if you truly wish for everything back, all that burden and heartache and pain, I can help you."
"You will help me?" Rainy repeats for emphasis, to be certain. "No strings attached?"
End flashback
It's nighttime. The full moon shines bright in the clear, starless sky; power lines and apartment building block it from view.
"You know I never suspected that you'd live in a regular house," Pietro admits. "I'd always assume you'd live somewhere more extravagant. Like a mansion or something?"
The sound of shower water hitting tile could be heard from the hallway.
The young mutant sits, leaning against one of the walls of her parents' home they've returned to. "Maybe next time I need a place to crash or hide, I'll come to you!" It's a joke. The laugh is withered and dry. "You have enough space here."
A cup of juice sits half empty on the kitchen table. The dining room lights are off; the only lights on in the home are her bedroom and the hallways, besides the bathroom of course. The shower water swirls down the shower drain. A used bar of lavender-scents soap sits in the porcelain shower dish.
"My mother got involved in a...organization, you can call it, when I was younger." Rainy tilts her head up toward the showerhead. Her ombre brown hair reaches between her shoulder blades when drenched. On one shoulder blade there's a tattoo of a cloud dropping blue raindrops into a blue puddle. "She sold some of our valuables as payment, for drugs, for money. And when my father figured why some of our things went missing, he became angry, I remember. But she had already acquired a huge debt with her hippie groupies. And by that time she'd become addicts to the attention, the drugs, going out late. She didn't have a job soon after."
As she stands under the warm water, her skin gains a red tint from the steaming temperature. She couldn't feel it. Rainy places her hands over her chest, on her thigh, and still not a sensory receptor goes off.
Pietro fingers the rim of his glass that holds Kool-Aid juice, listening to her through the walls.
"That's when I thought my parents were going to file for divorce. I figured that my father would be the one to have custody over me—it seems logical and most likely—and I remember feeling worried about my mother. My grandmother—her mother—has died not too long before and she was going through a rough stage. My father tried to help her but she denied that there was anything wrong, and told me to just focus on school. She's the one who convinced me to start sports in middle school."
Pietro straightens against the wall. There's only one wall and the bathroom door that separates them from each other.
The water slides down her olive skin, and she watches it gather and fall from her bellybutton and cupped palms. She can't feel any of it. Wonders what the last thing she did feel had been. What the feel of grass is, steam against her face, her mother's kisses. Rainy's eyes are wide, brightly colored, and remembering.
. . .
. . .
Flashback
Back then, no more than two hours ago, darkness had just fallen. The two teens were out the under makeshift shelter. Insects sing. Pietro jumps at an owl's hoot.
The only one who can help you is yourself
Halil had said
You know that, don't you, young lady
"Are you going to help me?" Rainy asks.
This Wish Granter continues staring at the two with his cheek in one hand, baldness gleaming, sitting cross-legged on a pillow, and one of his pale blonde eyebrows arches. And Pietro realizes how this man is so pale and is far too American for his self-proclaimed shaman title. He definitely is a fake shaman, is probably a fake wish-granter too. He looks to Rainy, skeptical on his own.
"I won't help you. I will, however, lend you power to contract with those forces beyond."
Rainy blinks. Pietro wonders if she is truly buying this lie.
He catches one of the candles nearest Halil flicker out.
"Oh, and please take a trip home. When you get there, cleanse your body with holy water and change into a set of pure clothes," the pseudo-magic man instructs. "Does meeting me back here around midnight sound convenient?"
Pietro looks for approval from the girl he's come with.
She nods. "Very."
"Ok. ...Now, the reward?"
Pietro makes a noise of confusion.
The deceitful man smiles. "What? You thought I would be doing this for free?" His eyes oogle her, traveling up her height to her high, sleek ponytail, down to her bright eyes and complexion, her full lips, her throat, her bosom.
Rainy blinks. Pauses. "How does $400 sound?"
Pietro's jaw drops but he doesn't dare speak. He stares at her incredulously.
"$400, huh?" Halil considers. "Do you think you can pay it, little lady?"
Pause.
"Of course. No matter what I have to do."
Pietro's eyes widen even more. Halil's focus carries a sinister undertone, blinking only once.
End flashback
. . .
. . .
"Do you really believe him?" Pietro asks loud enough for her to hear over the shower water.
In real time, he's staring at the turning fan on her bedroom ceiling and listening to Rainy's echoing voice. Listening. Daydreaming. He is lying on the carpet, arms outstretched, cup of juice empty.
"N. It is him, I remember. If he's able to take it, he can give it back."
The mutant muses this over. '$400...' He's never even seen that much money in his life, and just the thought of it...
His left hand curls into a fist.
His twin would probably be suspicious by now. Very likely is. Marya too. His youngest sister is no doubly asleep, and Aunt Marya would be worried sick. He knows that she has to be by now. She had been working late and would see that he's still gone.
"Say? Rainy?" He doesn't get a reply and so continues. "I met a friend of yours I think. Her name's Cherry or Sherry and she said that you went to the hospital not long ago. Are you sure you're up for this? I mean are you sure you're able to? You won't pass out or die and leave me with that creep will you?" He doesn't want to say that she shouldn't do this at all, but...
He waits, still no immediate response.
"Sherry told me that she ran into you at school. And yes, I'm sure." Before he could ask if she is truly certain, she adds, "You remember when I said that the carnival only comes every three years? I don't think I'll get another chance to do this."
The shower water turns off.
While that may be true, still—
Maybe—maybe he shouldn't say it.
"Yeah I remember..."
Closing his eyes partially, he couldn't believe that he's here and actually going through with this. Can't believe that he's set himself to get tangled up with someone like her—with her. Sure, he's known of Rainy for years—she isn't exactly unknown with her father's face on billboards all over town—has only spoken with her when absolutely needed. But this—this is absurd. This is way too much than he intended for. She's just supposed to be an easy ticket, a resource for him to mooch off of; he isn't supposed to become some assistant in some life-altering meeting.
This is crazy, absurd, and he should just leave.
He hears her feet slap against the tile bathroom floor. She's pretty heavy-footed.
But then he thinks—remembers about the past couple months. Of studying, or trying to and failing, of just listening to her reading or snarking and trying desperately to either hold in a smile or not being too rude and not get thrown out her house. Remembers her cursive handwriting, and terrible social and math skills, and the scabbed over chemical burn on her arm from chemistry class two years ago. She has terrible fashion sense—and he decides that she really does need help.
"I cannot feel
I have no emotions either"
Monster
He still has the paper wristband on from the carnival admission. They are their passes to getting back in the carnival. Halil signed it and wrote some message in permanent marker and that Pietro couldn't fully read.
"I have no feeling of touch...
I have no emotion...
There's no feeling to me,
Nothing whatsoever.
I'm empty.
Cursed
I'm a monster."
The teen should probably leave—he's hungry and bored to add. But then the bathroom door opens down the hall and he wonders how she would take it if he suddenly disappears. She needs help after all...
Rainy is standing in the doorway to her bedroom now, one towel wrapped around her body and another around her hair, water still drying on her shoulders.
"Get out of my room."
The boy scampers out at surprising speed. Only when the door slams close behind him does he call back. "Could you not have been a little decent?"
"You're in my house, in my room. Rules don't work to cater you here."
He isn't able to give a comeback as a hairdryer switches on from inside her room and he's left alone with his thoughts.
. . .
. . .