When Kerith got to the diner that afternoon to start his shift, he saw his sister at a booth in the corner, taking orders. Her hair was pulled back into a messy bun and there were bags under her eyes. He followed her back into the kitchen when she went to go put in the order.
"Jaryn, I—"
She ignored him and pushed past him back out into the dining area with a tray full of drinks. Whenever he tried to stop her during the time their shifts overlapped, she kept her eyes off of his face and moved away from him.
For about a month they had both owned separate cell phones - they had shared one before - purchasing them with some money they had been saving up. Their phones that month had been full of silly photos of people they saw and things they found that they sent to each other along with messages of encouragement during the times they were apart. This was the first time Kerith received a text from his sister's phone that filled him with a sense of dread.
You smelled like our father when you came home this morning. It made me throw up. Hope you're satisfied.
She had sent the message right after she had left the diner. He couldn't go after her. He still had three hours of his shift.
Kerith came home that night to an empty apartment and as he placed his keys in the almost completely unwoven and broken basket on the kitchen counter, he noticed the keys to the studio were missing. He was ready to grab his keys again and head down there, but he knew she needed time to cool off. She wouldn't want to see him right now.
He sat on the floor in front of their lopsided table in the living room of their apartment and set his phone down on the surface. Jaryn's text message was still up on the screen. It had been since he read it for the first time earlier that day. It only changed when the phone vibrated and Kerith picked it up, finding a new message from Elya.
They were going back to Cathedral.
…
He sat at his neurotically organized desk, flipping through the photos Oblio had brought him and watching live feeds from cameras he had sprinkled around the city in dance studios and clubs that his corporation owned.
He was watching Jaryn in Citywide Studios. She was alone, spinning and sliding across the wood floor in front of the giant mirror. Her eyes were narrowed, her jaw clenched. Her hands outstretched, fingers extended, nails like crooked talons on each one.
He was watching Kerith in Cathedral. A circle of people had formed around him, all swaying and clapping and he had a glass of beer in one hand and both arms above his head, shifting his hips back and forth to the music. The glass was almost full and not a drop of liquid was sloshing out of his with his movements. He eyes were smeared with black makeup and his hair fell around his face in sweaty strands of dirty blonde.
They reminded him of Bernice. Jaryn had her cold elegance and Kerith, her sleek power. And if Kerith danced anything like his sister while sober, these two could be unstoppable.
With some work and some cooperation here and there, they would be unstoppable.
Dr. Tan would make it so.
…
Oblio had stopped by Cathedral after his stepfather had told him to pick up the hard copies of the footage from the cameras there. Before he collected them, he stood along the railing of the walkway on the second floor of the club and looked down. He saw Kerith in the middle of a growing circle of people.
He frowned at the state the man was in and slipped away, throwing the tapes in the compartment on his bike before heading across town to the studio.
Kerith had seen Oblio on the walkway above, but at that point he wasn't sure if it was reality or the alcohol. He was faintly aware of the people around him, the people watching him and giving him space to dance. He was faintly aware that some point later he was dancing with Elya while Tommy and Steve were at the bar. Somewhere behind the haze he could feel himself finishing his glass of beer, he could feel himself dropping the glass at his feet and he could feel the people closing in around him. Elya was almost pressed against him at the point, both of them moving with the music. Kerith could see the mess of red hair on her head whipping back and forth. He heard the music in his head – it sounded to him like it was being filtered through the cheapest pair of headphones that existed.
He saw Elya bouncing around in front of him before standing on her tiptoes and wrapping her arm around him, clutching her fingers in his hair. Her cheek was suddenly pressed against his.
"Ker," he heard in his ears, a hiss over the bassline.
Only Jaryn called him that.
"You're an amazing dancer."
It was his sister's voice. When Elya pulled away from him, Kerith saw Jaryn dancing ahead of him. He knew it couldn't have been her though because her movements weren't exactly with the beat, they were jerky and uncoordinated.
"I know," Kerith responded, his voice dripping with alcohol-induced bitterness towards the alcohol-induced vision of his sister. "I know I am."
He shut his eyes and continued to move, shaking his head back and forth with the beat before opening his eyes to Elya's grinning face again. Kerith turned away from her, shifting his gaze back to the walkway. There was no one up there now.
"Jare." It slipped past his lips, drowned out by the music around him.
…
He found the doors to the studio open and slipped in, making his way down the dark hallway to the place where he'd first talked to Jaryn. She was inside the same room; first one on the right, dancing to something Oblio could only hear the bass of from where he stood. He watched her through the small window in the door, tearing his eyes away from her only for a moment to peer up in the corner above her and across the room. There was only one camera in that room and it was in that corner near the ceiling. He knew Dr. Tan was watching her.
Letting his knuckles hit the door a couple times, he slowly began to open it, slipping into the room. He figured the knocks would go unheard over the music. Jaryn stopped and padded over to the stereo, switching the music off.
"Hey…" she said, in between heavy breaths.
"You didn't have to stop, Jaryn."
"I need a break anyways."
He moved over to the stereo and restarted the music before waving her to the middle of the room and taking off his jacket, placing it in the corner of the room where the camera couldn't see it.
They spent the next hour or so talking and practicing, Jaryn showing Oblio moves he had never seen and Oblio assisting Jaryn with her extensions. She was usually so focused on her emotions when she danced – especially tonight after everything with Kerith - that she hadn't realized she hadn't been reaching her limbs out as far as they could go. The CD he had started had ended and they were both seated in the middle of the wooden floor, talking about the things she had learned in dance classes when she was little.
She was mildly surprised when a few moments passed and Oblio raised his voice slightly, "Oh, come here. I have to show you this really funny video I found. We can watch it on my phone."
"I didn't know you were amused by internet videos."
"I'm full of surprises, Jare."
Only Kerith called her that.
She followed him to the corner of the room where his jacket was crumpled up in a heap and stood over his crouching form. When he returned to a standing position, she opened her mouth to ask him where his phone was but was cut off by how close to her he had suddenly shifted. His lips were next to her ear, "Come with me tonight. To dance. They're going to be on the rooftops."
"Why are we over in the corner whispering about it?" Jaryn murmured back through a curtain of blue hair.
"The meetups are a secret."
"No one is here but us." Her first instinct had been to push him backwards, like she had done so many times in the past at the roller rink, but she found this much more welcome. Oblio wasn't strained against her, trying to hold her back against a sink or the side of a stall. He had herded her into the corner against the old stone walls of the studio and she noticed, finally, that one of her hands was wrapped in his and his other hand was against the wall behind her, near her shoulder. His breath on her ear was warm and she caught that scent again; lavender and patchouli.
"Secrets aren't meant to be shouted, Jaryn. They're something we share only with the people who need to hear them. Come with me."
Her free hand reached between them and pushed the blue wisps away from his eyes. "Fine."
Keeping her hand in his, he reached down and grabbed his jacket before pulling her from the studio. As she locked the building up, his phone rang.
"Where are you going?"
"We're going out to dinner."
"At midnight?"
"Yes, why is that such an issue?"
"You're not taking her to those others, are you?"
"No."
"Good. They've all already… contaminated each other. I don't want them getting to her and you too. I need everyone's specific skill sets and moves. Not a gross mess of it all oozed together."
Oblio hung up and slid the phone into the pocket of his jacket.
"Everything okay?"
"Yes." Oblio turned to Jaryn and picked the helmet up, handing it to her. "Just my stepdad, checking up on me."
"That's nice of him."
"Yes. Very." With a very small hint of a grimace, Oblio pulled away from the curb and felt Jaryn's arms tighten around his waist. He felt a small pang of guilt about lying to Dr. Tan, but some of the man's rules and practices rubbed Oblio the wrong way.
He didn't want them to get contaminated? Was that really the way he was going to word things? As far as Oblio knew, everyone Dr. Tan had been watching possessed certain qualities he wanted to infuse into their common goal. Bernice. His wife. Oblio's mother.
Oblio kept turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to some of the things Tan did or spoke about doing when it came to Bernice – the mere fact that he referred to the dancers possibly learning each other's moves and tricks in a friendly sort of fashion sent a shudder up Oblio's spine. How was that contamination?
He just wanted his mother back.
He hated looking at that gold mess of limbs in Tan's office though; the thing that would become his mother again one day, if everything worked out. He didn't want to think of that as his mother. He just wanted her back. He wanted to be able to wrap his arms around her small frame and kiss the crown of her head or tell her about the new bike he had been looking at. Oblio wanted to introduce his mother to—
His thoughts came to a screeching halt. He was supposed to be helping Tan get information about Jaryn and her twin brother for his work on Bernice. Not entertaining fantasies about introducing his mother to Jaryn.
That was it though. That was Oblio's goal. Tan just wanted her back for himself. Oblio wanted her back for her own life - to give her a chance at what was ripped away from her so fast.
He had come from a broken home and knew his mother had been through so much. He wanted to show her family. He wanted her to live her life. He wanted her to experience being a mother again, maybe even being a grandmother one day.
A grandmother.
Oblio knew that was why he always pushed people away. He never interacted and meshed with people just right and went to his mother when he had questions about anything relating to communication. When she died so suddenly, he felt awkward and alone and all those questions about how to interact – he could only ask himself.
And he never had the answers.
People he would almost grow close to, people he had started to possibly open up to would be driven away by something. Oblio felt like something in the universe wanted him to be alone, like he needed to be alone for a reason. Things always managed to drive people away from him. He turned to meditation and self-discovery. Since his mother died, he had been on a journey to find himself.
He wanted her back though. He wanted someone tell him that everything would be alright. He wanted to tell her everything would be alright.
He found himself surprised he had been able to talk to Jaryn so easily when he first met her and even on subsequent meetings with her when he would open up a little more here and there. She seemed to come from the same sort of mental place he had, except she had a brother with whom she could share her life and problems.
He had his bike.
Stumbling from the back of the bike, Jaryn stood there and waited for Oblio to take the helmet off of her. He did so, a faint trace of a grin on his lips, and pointed upwards to the building they had pulled up beside.
Dr. Tan had no cameras up there. The places the dancers met never had cameras.
She followed him into the lobby of the building, past an old busted elevator with blinking lights in it and into the stairwell, where they climbed flight after flight to the roof. They were both out of breath when Oblio finally pushed the door open, the cool breeze relaxing and refreshing.
"How many flights…?" Jaryn heaved.
"Twenty-two. Seemed like more, right?"
Jaryn could see the circle of people, just like she had that night on the way home from the Chinese restaurant. She could hear the music loud and clear over the cheers. Oblio grabbed her wrist and pulled her into the crowd where Jaryn could finally make out what was going on in the center. There was a girl dancing there with a head of bright pink hair and upside-down heart-shaped glasses over her eyes.
Oblio saw Jaryn's lips break into a grin.
The guy that Jaryn saw the first night, the one with the goggles, moved into the circle after her, giving her a high five on the way. Jaryn heard the pink-haired girl say something about the guy's grandma, which the guy cackled wildly about before the first notes of an old funk hit came over the speakers around the crowd. Everyone was clapping along and as the song wound down, the guy with the goggles pointed to the area in the crowd where Jaryn was standing.
"My man!"
Oblio suddenly shifted away from her, pushing through the crowd and looking to his right where he threw his jacket. It landed beside a kid who couldn't have been older than twelve or thirteen. He had black hair and a pair of sagging suspenders. He was running the stereo, Jaryn noted.
"G, Benny Benassi."
"Sure thing, O!"
Jaryn watched the kid fiddle around and let her eyes move back to Oblio when the music started. She had seen him dance some in the studio earlier, but it had been a move here and there, like she had seen from him other times they had hung out. She had never seen him perform; she had never seen him dance to a whole song. She found herself almost hypnotized by how raw he danced and how well he played the crowd – this was a whole different side of him.
She was reminded of Kerith. The same thing used to happen to him when he danced; he fell into his own little world, his own little persona. A pit formed in her stomach. Where was he right now? What was he doing?
"Ker," she found herself mumbling under the music.
When Oblio had invited her into the circle after him, she had refused, melting back into the crowd around her. The redhead she had seen the first night went in after Oblio. A few people had danced after her and then everyone had dispersed for the night. Oblio and Jaryn had retreated to the edge of the building while everyone was chatting and making their way to the stairwell and after awhile they were left alone, the moon and lamps from the buildings around them lighting up the rooftop in a pale glow.
No one could reach them up there. Not even Tan.
Jaryn stood, waist against the wall and hands planted on the edge, eyes scanning the city. They lingered here and there, the Boglife Insurance building, the over ground tracks of the subway – she could see the Tandance building through some of the other buildings around them. A tall silver skyscraper almost blocked her view of it. It was right next to the Tandance building and emanated a purple light from the top. A sigh escaped her lips. She had been in the city for a few years now and felt like she barely even scraped the surface of what was there.
Ripping her eyes from the purple light, she turned her head to Oblio, whose gaze was glazed over in the direction of the Tandance building.
"What are you thinking about?"
He shook his head. "Nothing."
She shifted and turned around, pressing the small of her back to the ledge. "Sure."
Narrowing her gaze, she watched his eyes. She could see his pupils growing smaller, widening again when he snapped his eyes to her, keeping the rest of his body still. She arched an eyebrow at him. "I don't believe you. What were you—"
He moved while she was speaking, gently pressing his lips to hers. Something in her mind protested, something small, ingrained deep in her brain, from her past. But she ignored it and returned the kiss, her hands grabbing at the front of his open jacket in between their bodies. She could feel her face growing warm.
When they pulled away from each other, he pressed his forehead to hers, blue pressed against dirty blonde, and he lowered his voice to a whisper.
"Jaryn, everyone who gets close to me… they get driven away."
"By what?"
Oblio fought off a shrug and dropped his gaze to the ground. "Me, I guess. I'm my own worst enemy."
"The whole Lone-wolf-with-a-motorcycle thing?"
He chuckled, pulling back from her, "Maybe."
"What about all those people that just left? They seem to know you well enough, they seem to like—"
"Acquaintances."
"Oh." She let go of his jacket and turned to face the city again, resting her elbows on the ledge and placing her chin in her hands. "So if you drive everyone away then why did you just—"
"It felt right."
"Why do you keep cutting me off?"
"Sorry," Oblio let out another dry chuckle. "Come on, we should get you home. Can't have your brother getting mad at me for keeping you out so late."
She forced a small laugh. She didn't want to tell him that she knew her brother wasn't home yet. She didn't want to tell him that she wanted to stay out longer either.
Jaryn knew that going into their empty apartment would only cause her to worry more.
She stayed quiet all the way down the stairs and spent the ride home with her eyes clenched shut, her thoughts locked on Kerith. Jaryn kept trying to force them to anything else. Dancing, the kiss Oblio had given her, running through the meals her regulars always ordered at the diner, but no.
Her mind always returned to Kerith.
