oh hey i'm still alive! and still working on this fic, despite all appearances.
title from "throne" by bring me the horizon.
ten: every wound will shape me
The desert is absolutely fucking endless.
They've been driving for the past day, on a course for Los Angeles. After they left Texas, they zoomed through New Mexico and Arizona, and finally crossed the border into California a few hours ago. The Welcome to California sign is the first sign of civilization that Jonathan has seen in about 500 miles.
Megan and Melissa haven't seen much of anything, since they've both been asleep since somewhere around Flagstaff. Melissa's pulled something in her arm, but she's insisting that it's fine, she just needs to rest.
Jonathan has slept once, when he let Melissa drive one-handed for several hours. He's not too worried about her out here — devoid of nearly all population, there's almost no mind noise in the desert. There's hardly even any mind noise in the car, she says, since Megan is apparently some kind of mindcaster kryptonite.
Jonathan turns to look at the girl passed out in the backseat. Does she look like a midnighter? Actually seeing another midnighter, here, in the flesh, is kind of hard to wrap his mind around. In his head, it's still the five of them — him, Dess, Jessica, Melissa, Rex. A club at school that no one really wants to join. He'd realized, of course, that there are more of them in the abstract — but somehow, he had never really mentally prepared himself to actually meet another one. He wonders if they're going to meet any midnighters who aren't their age. Old midnighters. Baby midnighters. It's too much to think about.
They've deviated from Dess's map by a few hundred miles. Jonathan has family out in California — relatives of his mother's who he hasn't heard from since she left. His mom wasn't close with her family; they never liked that she ran off with his dad instead of going to college. Jonathan knows that to his grandparents, he's just a product of bad decisions.
But it doesn't matter. They probably wouldn't even recognize him if they saw him. He certainly wouldn't recognize them.
The houses are growing closer together as they get closer to the city. The desert turns into ranches, ranches turn into suburbia. And then they hit traffic.
Melissa stirs awake first. "Are we there yet?"
Jonathan rolls his eyes. "What are you, twelve?"
"Jesus," Melissa says, rubbing her eyes. All her nail polish has nearly chipped off, only stubborn black half moons still clinging to the beds of her nails. "Are we close to the city?"
Jonathan remembers the green mile marker they'd passed a while ago. "Twenty miles?"
"And this is the traffic? You're kidding." In the rearview, Jonathan sees Melissa practically pressing her face up against the window, staring at the cars around them. They're moving, but slowly — a sea of red lights ahead of them as cars press on their brakes every few feet. Jonathan is going to remember this the next time anyone in Bixby ever tries to complain about traffic.
If they ever see Bixby again.
"Are you okay?" Jonathan asks.
Melissa nods. "We're way out of the blue time. I can't taste a thing."
Since they're going no faster than two miles an hour, Jonathan twists around to look at her. "What's that like?"
Her face turns pensive. "Good. Weird." She touches the side of her head. "I feel kind of lightheaded." Then she scowls. "Keep your eyes on the road, Flyboy."
"We're barely moving," Jonathan mutters, but obeys her anyway.
The pain in her arm and shoulder has faded to a dull throb that only really hurts if she moves it. Melissa is choosing to ignore the part where that's probably a bad thing. Instead, she watches the streets of Los Angeles roll by, feeling strange and lightheaded. They are hundreds of miles south of the 36th parallel; a part of the country that might as well be foreign for all Melissa knows about it. She can see palm trees from the car window. Palm trees.
A few months ago, this would have been her dream. Total, utter silence in her head — she can't even sense Flyboy's thoughts or Megan's non-taste.
She's enjoying it less than she thought she would, somehow.
Even after Madeleine had passed down the methods to control her powers, taught Melissa to rise above the mind noise like a boat riding a wave, the thoughts were always still there. In a way, the noise was soothing — when it wasn't invading her brain, it was dull and monotonous. Comforting like the hum of her parents' air conditioner in the summer.
The sudden silence, the emptiness in her head…it feels strange, like not being able to taste Megan is strange. She's glad of it, she really is, but — it's not normal. It doesn't feel like her at all.
She's only felt like this once before, in the summer right after…what she and Rex had done to his dad — Rex's mom shipped him off to Texas to stay with his grandparents while she "figured things out" (translation: moved all her crap out of the house and bailed to Norman). They hadn't found Dess yet, and Melissa had spent hours sitting on her rooftop, feeling the silence in her brain and wondering what to do with it.
It had been a relief then, but now it only makes her paranoid. How do people live like this, not knowing what anyone is thinking? The fact that she can't figure out exactly what Megan wants with them is making her crazy. It's so clear that the girl isn't saying everything, but Melissa has no idea what. She's not even sure Megan wants to be traveling with them, even though she asked.
She drums her fingers on the door of Flyboy's car, wondering if he stopped for gas while she was out. Oh, shit, that's another thing about no blue time — they won't be able to steal cash or supplies from any stores while time is frozen. Unless Megan can still do her invisibility thing, but if Melissa's mindcasting doesn't work —
Melissa turns to look at Megan, still sleeping in the passenger seat across from her. Does she seem less invisible now? When they're looking right at her, or if they concentrate enough while looking away, she's easy to see. But if they get distracted, even just for a second, she starts to slide out of view.
Melissa turns to look straight ahead, but she can still see Megan out of the corner of her eye. She turns back to examine her again. She sleeps without taking off her glasses, just like Rex.
Megan stirs and grunts, one eye opening. "Quit watching me, weirdo."
"Me?" Where does this girl even get off calling her weird? Fine, Melissa is weird — all of them are, aren't they? — but it rankles coming from this new midnighter.
"Calm down, children," Flyboy says dryly from the front seat.
He definitely isn't one to be talking about calling people a child. Without thinking, Melissa reaches over and flicks the back of his head with a fingernail. "Not you calling us children, bouncy boy."
"Is that a new nickname?" Jonathan asks. "Because I'll stick with 'Flyboy.'"
"You guys are weird," Megan grouses. "I would not have gotten in a car with you if I had known you were so weird."
"You followed us for almost a month, and you didn't notice?"
Melissa smirks, and Jonathan laughs, and even Megan sighs and smiles. For a moment, nobody is fighting or worried. Their happiness swells and suspends in the air like a soap bubble.
Then the bubble bursts, and like a delayed reaction, Melissa's finger starts to tingle. She isn't wearing gloves — it's too hot out here, for one, and if she can't mindcast, there's no point. She'd just reached out and touched Flyboy, completely unprotected, without even thinking about it. Why had she done that? It's like she had just forgotten that she's her and touch has to be carefully considered, if not totally verboten.
She is losing her mind out here. That is the only explanation.
Los Angeles is hot. And crowded. And it looks like a movie set. And it's hot.
Everything about downtown LA looks vaguely familiar, every image she's ever seen on TV and the movies blurring into the real streets they're walking through now. They checked into and parked at a crappy motel, and now they're waiting in line at a lunch counter for — Melissa squints at the handwritten menu — sandwiches. There are no-meat options, thankfully, although everything seems to have avocado in it for some reason.
It must be lunch break, because the line is long, dozens of people packed together. Melissa is gratified to see that Flyboy and Megan look just as overwhelmed as she does by the crammed restaurant. When their turn comes, they don't step up to the counter fast enough, and someone shoves Melissa from behind.
She whirls around, ready to give them the glare of death she's perfected over the last ten years, and she comes face to face with crew of burly construction workers. She turns back around.
They get their sandwiches and find a booth - most people aren't staying to eat, they're grabbing their lunch in white paper bags and hurrying out. Melissa inhales, grateful to be sitting down. This room is loud - not mind noise, just regular noise. It's disorienting in its own weird way, making her feel surrounded and trapped.
"So are you two going to like…come with me to see Ashley's parents?" Megan asks, distaste evident in her voice.
Melissa takes a bite of her sandwich to avoid answering. Huh. Avocado isn't half bad.
Jonathan gives her a look, then sighs and turns to Megan. "I guess I can drive you. You know where she lives?"
"I know the address. I'd have to look up how to get there."
"We can go, then," Jonathan says. His eyes shift over to Melissa. "Melissa, do you…"
She hesitates. She doesn't want to go with them, not particularly. The Larkins will be grieving, probably, and she just…doesn't know what to do with that. What are they going to say? Sorry about your dead daughter? She was killed by supernatural creatures? We tried to save her but we fucked up?
"Nah," she says. "The less of us, the better." She hesitates, then pulls Megan's necklace out of her pocket. "You can give this to the Larkins. Or keep it. I don't know."
Megan takes it, her fingers brushing Melissa's. Melissa braces herself for the touch, but nothing happens, not so far out here.
They finish eating and pay. Flyboy pauses a bit, jangling the change in his hand. Then he shoves a couple of quarters across the table towards Melissa. "You call Rex and update him. Me and Megan will go find where the Larkins live."
Melissa stares down at the tarnished gray coins in her hand. They're still warm from Jonathan's skin, and it feels like they're burning her.
She hasn't called since Edmond. The first call to Rex was easy enough — telling them what they've seen outside of Bixby, that they haven't found any midnighters yet, that she misses him. It was true, and it's still true — but ever since that night…she doesn't know. It changed something in her. She doesn't have the words for what it was like. She can't stand there, hearing Rex through a tinny phone connection, hundreds of miles away, and tell him.
Flyboy and Megan don't notice her discomfort, or maybe they just pretend not to.
Why is she so afraid of calling Rex? All she has to do is dial his number, which she knows by heart. She'll tell him about Megan and Rex will know the name for her power and he'll be so excited to have found a new midnighter that he'll forget to ask about anything else.
It's not like he's here, she reasons with herself. It's not like her face could even give her away.
Yes. She'll call him. She can do this.
The other problem: there isn't a single pay phone that she can see. All around her are overly tanned people wearing shorts in November, chattering away on tiny silver cell phones, apparently too rich for pay phones.
Melissa sighs and starts to walk.
"Turn here," Megan says.
Jonathan obeys — he has to, since Megan is the one with the map. They left Melissa almost an hour ago, but they're crawling their way to the Larkins' house. LA's traffic is absolutely impenetrable. It reminds him of Tulsa or Oklahoma City turned up to eleven — a flat expanse of sprawl, endless miles of strip malls and ranch houses spilling into each other, reaching tendrils into the empty desert. This is real Flatland — it's like what scientists (and Dess) say about the end of the universe, that one day it will all spread out until there's nothing left.
It's nothing like Philadelphia, Jonathan thinks. Narrow is the best word for the east coast, buildings all crammed together, reaching up into the sky. Families living on top of each other in triple-decker houses; his old elementary school classmates bouncing basketballs off the wall of the apartment building next door.
It creeps him out if he thinks too hard about it. All the places he's been, the distance between here and there. It doesn't seem real, at times. How could he and his dad have just picked up and moved like that? How could his mom have just never come home one day? How could the long midnight have just happened, the blue time snapping like that? How could everything have ended up like this?
It's better to keep moving, stay ahead of the thoughts.
"So," Megan says, "is that Melissa girl always this much of a bitch or what?"
Jonathan drums his fingers on the steering wheel. "It takes time for Melissa to get to know people. She didn't like me when we first met, either. But she'll open up. And she's had it kind of hard, you know?"
Megan snorts. "Plenty of people have it hard. That doesn't give her the right to act like a jerk."
Jonathan shrugs, not wanting to argue the point. He's not sure he has an argument for that.
The Larkins live in a low white house in a cul-de-sac. It's eerily familiar — like so many houses in Bixby. Jonathan drums his fingers on the steering wheel while Megan gets out of the car, trying to get his anxiety out.
"If I'm not out within twenty minutes, make sure I'm not dead," Megan tells him.
Jonathan mimes a hat tip. "Will do."
Megan goes up to the door and rings the doorbell. A woman opens the door. She's wrapped in a gray cardigan and wearing house slippers. Her face is drawn, that resigned look of grief that Jonathan knows so well. Megan says something to her and the woman lets her inside, closing the door behind them.
Don't pick up, don't pick up, she prays. Leaving a message would be so much easier.
There's a click, and then Rex's voice says, "Hello?"
Crap.
Melissa looks at her watch, and sighs internally when she realizes that Oklahoma is two hours ahead of California. Of course Rex would be home. School has been out for almost an hour now.
"Hey, Rex. It's me."
"Melissa?"
She winces. The words burst through the phone, almost violent.
"How are you?" Rex's words come out in a rush, blurring together as he talks. Melissa has never been great on phones. "Where have you been? Did you find anyone? Are you okay on money? Why haven't you called?"
"Jesus, Rex," Melissa says, feeling a flash of irritation. She wishes he would just slow down for once, let her go at her own pace first before trying to sort her out. Has he always been like this? Maybe — he has always had to watch her, grab her arm to stop her from walking into traffic, shield her with his tall frame when they navigated the crowded cafeteria. Babysitting, as Dess would always think of it when she thought Melissa wasn't listening.
The idea that this is somehow her fault, like she is a bad habit Rex has to break, makes her feel guilty, and that just sours her mood even more.
"We're fine," Melissa says, swinging the ropy metal phone cord as she talks. It hits the side of the booth and she winces.
"Dess found this article," Rex says. "About a girl who was killed in Edmond?"
Melissa freezes. How the fuck does she explain this?
"Yeah," she says slowly.
"Did you…I mean, did you and Jonathan — do you know — "
"No," Melissa says shortly. "We heard about it. But we didn't…you know. See her."
There. She has lied to him. The lie is out now, and she can't take it back.
"Dess thinks she might be a midnighter," Rex says. "Or…you know, was. The dates add up."
"Maybe."
"Yeah."
They're quiet for a moment, Melissa acutely aware of the fact that they're wasting Flyboy's quarters. They usually call collect, but they had the change this time, and — it feels suddenly pointless somehow, the realization that she can't fish them out of the phone's guts, that this call has to limp on under the weight of everything she's not saying.
"How's Dess, anyway? And Jess," she adds belatedly.
"Uh — " Rex sounds startled, which Melissa can't blame him for. It's not like she's in the habit of worrying about the two other girls, even though she realizes she could use one of them right now — Dess would interrupt this conversation with some kind of sarcastic remark. Jessica would be telling Rex how exciting it was to meet Megan and probably meaning it.
"They're okay," he says. "As okay as they can be, I guess. Jess is…surviving. How's Jonathan?" he adds, and the fact that he's asking about Flyboy is a testament to how truly sad this conversation is.
"The same," Melissa says, which is another lie. Flyboy actually doesn't annoy her much anymore, in his way. She doesn't know if she is adjusting her routine to fit him into it, or if he's adjusting his, or if they're both learning how to move around each other. It feels almost like a revelation, that maybe you can get used to people. She wants to tell Rex, but it sounds stupid in her head. Besides, he's never taken well to anyone complimenting Jonathan Martinez.
"Where are you, anyway?" he asks.
"We just left Borger," Melissa says. "We're going to Santa Fe next."
"Did you find anything in Borger?"
"Besides a horrendous amount of lifted trucks? Not really."
"There have to be more midnighters," Rex says, and Melissa recognizes the beginning of a lecture. "They can't just be —"
"Well, what are we supposed to be doing?" Melissa cuts him off. "Should we walk through town with a big sign like, 'Have you suddenly started experiencing middle-of-the-night delusions right at the stroke of midnight? Have you seen a friend get eaten by monsters? Ask us about midnight'?"
"Who got eaten?" Rex asks and it takes all of Melissa's energy not to hit her head against the side of the booth.
Rex doesn't get it — this trip isn't really about finding more midnighters. She suddenly realizes it, standing here in this shitty phonebooth in the LA heat. This trip is about getting the hell out of Bixby, running from everything that has happened since the rip. Her parents suddenly waking up and wanting to know what the hell has been going on in their house for the past ten years. The police wanting to scapegoat Jonathan for every single thing that went wrong on Halloween night. She has no idea how Rex and Dess can stand to stay there.
"Nobody that we know of," she says. "I just meant — never mind."
"Maybe you can keep an eye out for whatever happened to that girl in Edmond."
Melissa picks at a sticker for 93.5 FM — The Best Hits All Day! stuck to the side of the booth. It's been there so long that the adhesive has basically melded into the metal, and her fingernail just scrapes down the side without catching anything.
"Yeah. Maybe."
"Be careful," Rex says.
For the first time, his command annoys her. Rex's seer-knows-best attitude has never bugged her the way it chafes at Jonathan or Dess — Jess never minded Rex giving orders, the goodie-goodie — but suddenly it does. He's stuck in Bixby; he's never even been farther north than Oklahoma. He doesn't know anything about what it's like out here. What she's seen. What she's felt.
"We will," she says shortly.
"I miss you," Rex says quietly.
"I —" Melissa starts, but then she hears the clunk of the phone disconnecting.
Your call has ended, the automated voice chirps. Insert twenty-five cents to call again.
Megan exits the house a little while later. She's not holding the necklace anymore, and Jonathan figures that she gave it back.
She opens the door and climbs into the front seat without saying a word. She's not crying - thank God; Jonathan never knows what to do with crying anyone, not just girls. Instead, she just sits, staring blankly at the glove compartment.
Jonathan turns the key in the ignition. What does he do? Comfort her? He doesn't even know her. But just driving off seems callous.
Before he can say anything, Megan starts talking.
"How do you do it?" she asks. "How do you deal with everything suddenly being...different? I mean, my life was normal. Not perfect, but...normal. And now it's this. I never saw anyone die before."
Jonathan remembers Jess saying those exact words after Anathea died. It's not easy, he knows, realizing the world isn't what you thought it was. But he's known that. Even before he moved to Bixby, before seeing midnight, he knew things weren't what they seemed. The rest of his classmates had their happy, complete families. He was the only one who knew that it's not always like that, that sometimes your mom runs off in the middle of the night and doesn't come back for weeks. And then one day she never comes back at all.
The other midnighters know things like this, too. Maybe that's what brings them together, more than midnight, more than anything else.
"You get used to it," he says finally.
She shakes her head. "I had no idea what to say to them. I just made up a bunch of stuff about how Ashley showed me around campus and how we hung out at UO. Like, what do I even tell my parents? They have no idea where I am."
"You could call them," Jonathan offers feebly.
"They'd try to get me to come back." She pulls one of her legs up onto the seat, resting her chin on her knee. "And I can't. Not until I can get this to make sense, you know? But they'd never believe that I suddenly need to, like, take a spiritual journey."
"Are you close to them?"
"I guess. I mean, as much as anyone is to their parents. I'm sure they would've liked me to be, you know, perkier, but — " She shrugs. Jonathan wonders if she's overheating in her thick black sweater, out here in the California sun.
"My dad, too," he says.
"No mom?"
The bluntness of the question is almost a relief. He shakes his head. "She ran off ages ago."
"Oh." Megan looks out the window at the traffic heading back towards Century City and Beverly Hills, where they left Melissa. They agreed to meet there since the area is pretty touristy and easy to find, but Jonathan hopes that the trendy shoppers haven't sent Melissa into a meltdown.
The quiet residential streets give way to parks and museums and eventually shops. Most of Los Angeles is strip malls, just like Bixby, but not Beverly Hills. Each store gets its own building, every designer label holding itself apart from its neighbors. Jonathan turns down another, more industrial-looking street, trying to get away from the excess and the traffic.
He only glances for jaywalkers for a second — this street doesn't even have a crosswalk. But that doesn't stop a figure from darting out in front of the car. Jonathan slams on the brakes, his seatbelt locking as it aggressively tries to stop his momentum.
"Jesus!" Megan yells.
"What the hell?" Jonathan asks, twisting to see what he nearly hit.
Then he says, "What the hell?" again, for an entirely different reason.
The girl is rapping angrily on his window, motioning for him to roll it down. Jonathan is all too happy to oblige.
"What are you doing?" he asks.
"I thought I recognized this ugly-ass car," Constanza Grayfoot says.