Trying To Heal

Chapter Thirty-Six

Derek

Late in the night, the storm congregates my true family in the kitchen, enjoying some leftover pasta.

Thomas settles his fork, and in French, "Who is Nora Collins?"

"She is a famous model." Tanner is in a short-sleeved tank top and shorts. His left hand is tattooed in great detail with the eye of Horus. At a distance, it would appear like the malevolent eye of the famous Lucifer painting. His right hand is marked with the weighing scales, either in reverence of the ideological Anubis or his notion of balance like the ironic, perfect shade of grey. The veins of his arms are inked in some sort of tribal designs about his Kenyan and Dominican background, interlinking with the feathers of wings that overpowers his shoulder blades. The art of courage: wings attached to a sword that lines his spine. "To be precise, she is one of the most successful models. We have met her before, Derek."

I frowned behind my black-framed glasses. "Nous avons?"

"In 2020, for Bonheur's spring debut. She said some rude shit about his designs, and we embarrassed her reputation. She modeled for brands that exploited cheap and child labour and other fucked up things."

"We embarrassed many reputations, Tan. I forgot who she is." To Aunt Marlene, "Do you know who she is?"

"Non," she replies.

"She is not technically successful, then," says Lin. He has given me the dualism heirloom for my eighteenth birthday. He had a replica made for Tanner's eighteenth, which was on the 6th of June.

Tanner withdraws his fresh-new phone, his keyboard resonating as he types. He shows me a picture of this model.

"I still cannot remember her," I say.

"She is very cocky," mutters Tanner. "She thinks she is better than everyone." He puts his phone away. "She hurt Elijah?"

Grandma inquires, "Elijah, as in the little boy at the orphanage?"

"Yes," I say. "I want her found. Where the hell is Luke?"

"He is at the Base," says Thomas, sipping his tasteless green tea.

Tanner pushes his plate of pasta aside, losing his appetite, and in Spanish, "Every day, I get another reason to hate these fucking celebrities. My favourite actors, for fuck's sake, are trying to hide in the public eye. They are all the same. Even the ones who did not do anything physically are accountable from afar."

"This is why your parents never interacted with that circle," says Grandma. "They always had an intuitive sense that their energy and vibrations were off. Murky. Baffling. Now we know why."

"Y ahora todo el mundo tiene que saber," I add.

"At the right time. We have to solve this case first before bringing it to the news."

Tanner rubs his hands to fight off an invisible coldness. "I talked about these celebrities with respect," he utters distantly. "I went to the theatres to watch their movies and listened to their songs every day. Now I stopped. Every time I see a new fame, I always assume they are the same, out about it."

"Because they are," I say. "The fame and money get to their head, whether they grew up in it or not. They never learn. They get greedy and hunger for more stupid shit. Tareq once said that in his religion, Islam, if someone who has done you wrong seems to be in a happy place — if they are getting everything they wanted —, then it means they are doomed. If they are happy now, they will not be happy in their coffins. That is how his God plays chess."

Tanner cups his boiling mug of steaming ginger tea. "For once, it seems the Abrahamic God is doing something right."

"Almost influenced me to convert," I say. Half-playful and half-serious. "I quite like that analogy. We should mirror it into physical manifestation."