Zero words were exchanged for four days straight between Kerith and Jaryn, Kerith finally breaking the silence one night when he crawled into bed next to her after a late shift at the diner. He stared at the back of her head for a moment before he let his gaze drop to her shoulder that was peeking out from under the blanket.
"Our anniversary is next week. On Friday."
"Hnnngh?" Jaryn said into her pillow.
"Three years since we moved to the city. Want to do something?"
Kerith watched her move, her body forming growing and vanishing bumps under the cover as she turned over to face him—a hip, an elbow, a knee. Finally, her gray eyes were locked on his.
"You mean there will be a night that you aren't going out with them?"
"Jare, I don't go out with them every night." He buried his left hand under his pillow. "You aren't going out with Oblio?"
"Not on Friday." Jaryn swallowed a mouthful of dry air. "Chinese buffet?"
"He hasn't hurt you, has he?"
"What? No."
Kerith watched Jaryn shut her eyes and felt her curl her legs up under the covers. "Chinese buffet," he murmured. He could see she had been drifting off; a fact that was proven when her foot reflexively hit his shin.
…
"So, Oblio."
Oblio was seated in a chair on the other side of Dr. Tan's desk, cross-legged with his hands in his lap, peering across the steel surface and stacks of paper to his stepfather.
"Are you coming to the soiree this weekend?"
"What?"
"I'm holding a… a party… at my estate this weekend."
"For what?"
"To gather the dancers."
Oblio only tilted his head slightly, in response. A party?
"You think everyone will just show up at your house for a party?"
Dr. Tan sat back in his oversized chair and threw his head back, barking a laugh. "Oh, Oblio. They'll come if there's money and fame." He reveled in the expression of slight confusion that marred Oblio's features. The boy had Bernice's scowl. Tan would need that scowl. He would need the most from Oblio. "If I say I'm holding a soiree to find a dancer – or dancers – for Tandance to sponsor in competitions… how many of them do you think will bite and show up?"
Oblio felt his heart skip a beat.
"And I need you get Jaryn there. Her brother too, if you can manage. I need her more than him right now. Her elegance, her grace. She's a well-oiled machine. Her brother hasn't worked out all of his… kinks… yet."
"If you need her the most, then why invite the others?"
He stood from his desk and moved around it, passing Oblio to the opposite side of the room where a row of cylinders hung from the tall ceilings of the man's office. There were silver limbs filling some of them. The one in the middle though, that one was all gold.
"My prototypes," Dr. Tan motioned to the silver forms as he spoke. "The Cyphers. They each have moves here and there, certain nuances that I've programmed in from watching some of the dancers. When I put them all together…" His hands moved to the center cylinder. "…they almost equal Bernice. A little attitude here, a little groove there. But she needs more."
Moving his hands over some of the panels along the wall near the cylinders, a large image formed in the air in between them. It was a grid of faces. He recognized… he recognized all of them - most of them from the group that met every other weekend. The ones Tan had called contaminated.
A laser pointer ripped through the hovering image of one of the faces.
"Mo. His sense of rhythm is almost unmatched." The pointer moved. "Aubrey. Your mother had taste. She'll need that taste back." The red line ripped through a sweatband over a head of brown hair. "Emilia. Athleticism. Jaryn. Elegance."
Oblio shook his head slowly. He was planning to lure the dancers here, get these… intangible elements out of them somehow… and put them into Bernice. That gold thing hovering in that cylinder.
He stared at the laser beam which was currently shooting a red hole through Jaryn's forehead.
"You're not… getting attached… are you, Oblio?"
Oblio's lips thinned.
The laser pointer switched off and Oblio could see Tan through the image, clasping his hands behind his back.
"We all know what happens when you try to make friends. Ever since I married your mother I've watched you damage relationship after relationship. You need help, boy."
Oblio ignored the man and looked back to the grid, his eyes locking on Jaryn and her twin brother again.
"How are you doing this?" He spoke quietly, almost afraid of the answer he was going to get. "How are you getting these things from these people?"
"Science."
"No, Tan. Tell me." His voice grew louder as he stood up, his eyes boring through the hologram between them to the man's face. "How are you doing this?"
"Oh, it'll just be a simple procedure." He moved forward slowly, stepping through the hologram and warping it, stopping mere inches away from Oblio. "Just a few… needle pricks here and there… that's all."
Oblio could feel his jaw clenching and his hands forming fists at his side. He rarely grew angry, but this seemed out of hand. He thought he was collecting information from these people to plant in Tan's project – information that would build and form in the mind of that golden heap of limbs – it would process and work together to give his mother back her movement, her style. Oblio would be the final part; feeding her information for her memories… he didn't know they'd all be experiments. He opened his mouth to protest but was met with a tattered, old photograph Tan had pulled from his pocket.
It was Oblio and Bernice. They were seated on the steps of their old house. Oblio's hair was black and he had a huge grin on his face. She had her arms wrapped around his neck from behind.
"Shhh, Oblio. Everything will be alright. Trust me."
Oblio finally tore his eyes from the photo and looked over it to Dr. Tan.
"Trust me."
…
Jaryn worked the early evening shift at the diner on Thursday and came home to an empty apartment. She had a text from her brother saying that he'd be back later and that he loved her. It left a bad taste in her mouth, like it always did now, and she found herself standing at the window, staring out across the street in front of their apartment. Her eyes moved up to the tall buildings surrounding theirs and she exhaled, the glass fogging up for a few moments.
She didn't realize how long she had been standing there, and most likely would've stayed there lost in her head somewhere if her phone hadn't started playing a Lady Gaga song on the counter behind her.
"Hey."
"Evening. What are you up to?"
"Nothing exciting."
"Well, how about we make it something exciting?"
"What did you have in mind?"
"Unsure. It just sounded good."
Within the hour, Oblio had picked Jaryn up from the apartment and they were at a mini-golf course on the third hole of their first round. Jaryn recognized some of the others on the course that night. She saw a girl with smooth, dark skin talking to the girl with the red ringlets – two of the people from the rooftops and bridge, two of the ones she had seen dancing. A young girl with the same shade of skin as the first was jumping up and down trying to interrupt when the older one took her hat off and placed it on the young girl's head. "Shuddup, sis. The adults are trying to talk."
"You're not adults!" The girl screamed back from under the hat.
Jaryn looked back to Oblio, who was crouched on the ground, chin to the astroturf, trying to find the perfect line from the ball to the hole.
"Really?" Jaryn smirked.
"I'm trying to return the ball to its home. Felt the wind, now I want to make sure I get the angle—"
"You want to win."
"Maybe," Oblio pushed himself to his feet and took his shot, sinking the ball. He was about to turn to Jaryn, pursing his lips and ready to add something to that when a voice cut him off.
"Hey there, Oblio. Who's your friend?"
Jaryn hadn't noticed the two older girls had approached, the younger one wandering around behind them with the hat still over her face.
"Oh. Hey ladies." Oblio pointed to Jaryn with his golf club. "Jaryn, this is Aubrey and Taye. Aubrey and Taye, Jaryn." He shifted the golf club to Aubrey and Taye, which Aubrey took no time in sneering at before tapping the end and pushing it away from her. She thrust her hand out after that, which Jaryn shook.
"Nice to meet you, Jaryn," she said. Taye nodded her head as well, a genuine smile on her face.
"Likewise, both of you." Jaryn returned the smile.
"You're up," Oblio leaned down and retrieved his yellow golf ball before stepping off the green.
Jaryn had moved away from them and went to putt and Aubrey took that chance to elbow Oblio in the side. "She's cute, Oblio. Look at you."
"She has a twin brother, you know," he responded, injecting just a hint of sarcasm into his voice.
"Oh does she now?"
"What about Angel? I don't think he'd like that," Taye playfully asked Aubrey, rolling her eyes as she did. She looked back to Jaryn, leaning in a bit to the blue-haired man. "Is she a dancer?"
"She is."
"Taye!"
Taye turned away from Oblio and saw her little sister trying to get the hat off of her head. "You got it stuck on your braids again? Come on, girl…" Taye wandered away, Aubrey giving Oblio a small wave and a wink before following her friend.
He watched them both get farther away, dread rolling into a sick ball in his stomach. Were they planning on going to Tan's Estate the next night? What would happen to them if they did?
"Got it in two."
Oblio was startled out of his trance, moving his head to the left to see Jaryn back in front of him, club in one hand and purple ball in the other hand. "Next?"
He nodded.
"You alright?"
He kept nodding.
They finished that round and played a second, him winning the first and her winning the last, then walked down to the beach, where they sat and watched the last rays of the early summer sun vanish. They had sat in silence since they got there, Oblio with his eyes locked on the horizon and Jaryn taking in the sights around them. She saw a kid knocking over a sand castle while his parents were packing up their beach gear, a couple laughing and sharing a milkshake, a tall blonde lifeguard sitting in a chair above everyone – he was absently knocking the inside of his left flip-flop against the bottom of his heel and talking to a girl with dark hair on the beach below him. She was twirling a volleyball on her finger and Jaryn recognized her from the rooftops. She was a dancer too.
When she finally let her gaze drift back to her left, she saw Oblio staring at her. He was leaning back, his hands planted in the sand behind him, and the breeze kept pushing his bangs away from his face. His eyes were narrowed and his brow furrowed slightly.
"What would you do to get your mother back?"
The question caught her off guard and all she could do was sit in the sand, shaking her head slowly and letting her lips work around words that weren't coming out.
"Why?" She finally said.
Oblio wanted to tell her everything. Everything about Dr. Tan – his stepfather, everything about the party at the estate, everything about Bernice…
"It's nothing. I was just thinking about her…"
Jaryn watched him as he looked back to the horizon. He didn't say another word about it.
It was almost midnight when she returned home and she found her brother seated in one of the vinyl beanbags. His head was back and his arms were splayed out over the sides. He didn't look to her when she entered.
"Hey."
He said nothing and only slightly turned his head away from her in response.
Jaryn moved to him as soon as the metal of her keys hit the counter. She hovered over the beanbag and it only took moments before she had to step away from him.
"Drinking again?"
"I had one glass of wine with dinner. I went out with Elya." Kerith finally turned his head to her, the back of it lolling slowly over the beanbag. His eyes were red. "Were you out with your Dark Prince? How's Oblio?"
She didn't bother answering his question. "One? You smell like you swam in the wine cellar."
Kerith responded only by answering his phone that had started to ring. "Cathedral? Yeah, I'll be there in thirty." He hung the phone up and slid out of the beanbag, pulling himself to his feet. He stood in front of Jaryn, looking down at her. "Excuse me. I need to go get ready."
"Yes, of course you do. Because you really need to drink more."
He pushed past her and went into the bathroom where he began to pull makeup out of one of the drawers. She stood in the entrance to the bathroom and watched him. It was hard for her to stand there with him smelling like he did, but she stood her ground – arms crossed, head tilted. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest. How did all of this happen?
"Like you even give a shit anyways, Jaryn." Kerith began to smear black around his eyes like he did most nights of the week now. It was a second nature to him and every single time he applied it, it reminded him of when the two of them were doing the same thing in the bathroom of their old house three years earlier. They were laughing and that was comforting, even though the laughter hadn't lasted long that night.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"Just what it sounds like! You're spending all your time gallivanting around with Oblio and leaving me alone."
"Alone?! You mean alone with those assholes you call friends? The ones who feed you booze and drag you around for amusement while they act like dicks? Those friends?"
"You don't even know them, Jaryn! If you'd just spend some time—"
"Don't even start that. I told you how I felt about them when we met them, they—"
He cut her off, throwing the eyeliner he had been applying into the sink. It left a long black streak in the basin. "Not to mention all the time you spend in that studio. I feel like I might as well be living here myself – I feel like I left you in that damn hellhole little town and came here alone—"
"Oh, now you're gonna bitch about my dancing?! Since when?" She threw her arms up and retreated to the small living room, moving over to the kitchen counter where her keys sat, yelling back all the way. "Maybe I'm spending time with Oblio because he's actually been supporting my dancing unlike you—"
"You're there all the time!" He followed her out, his bloodshot eyes standing out more thanks to the eyeliner and the scar that still marred his face standing out like a tiny exclamation mark – white against his flushed cheeks. His voice was raised. "I never see you unless we're at work together! How is that even possible, Jaryn?! How is that us?! I see you at work and I watch you sleep—we have to share a damn bed and I feel like I never talk to you!"
"So drinking makes it all better? Kerith, I—"
"It gives me something to do. It gives me something to go to while you're gone." His voice cracked.
"Kerith, you're blaming your drinking on my dancing."
"Oh god, sorry I'm telling the truth—"
"It's unbelievable!" Jaryn's voice was shrill now. "I wanted to get out of that shithole to get away from dad, to be with you and to dance. And now you're gonna say that—"
"I didn't realize it'd be your life! I didn't realize you'd cut me out to—" Kerith stopped in the middle of his words, the screams coming to a halt and the apartment falling into a deafening silence. He had seen the realization dawn on his sister's face just as he had come to realize what he assumed was the same exact thing.
They had turned into their parents.
Jaryn was shaking her head and tears were falling from her eyes. He hadn't seen her cry like this in almost three years. He wanted to move over to her, but he noticed she was fumbling for her keys. The studio keys.
"Don't you dare… Jaryn…" Kerith was shaking and he hadn't realized he had pressed his shoulder against the apartment wall to steady himself. "Don't leave… not now… don't you do it…"
She picked up the studio keys and began to move backwards towards the front door, her head was still moving, back and forth.
"Jaryn…"
One question kept repeating itself over and over in her head.
What are you gonna do – hit me?
She knew he would never… but she had never really come across Kerith awake after he had been drinking. She was staring at him now, his side against the wall, slowly sliding to a sitting position. His eyes were locked on hers and his mouth kept warping from a sneer to a frown and back again. Was that still her brother?
"No…" Jaryn felt around for the doorknob behind her and left the apartment. "Keith," she whispered to the empty hallway before jogging towards the elevator.
Behind her, in the apartment, Kerith let out a growl and slammed an open palm on the countertop.
Inhaling deeply, he told himself to let it go for now. He had a club to go to. Music to bob his head to. Drinks to drink.
