Waiting for Sunday

chapter 9 - until when do I stand

It began in a graveyard. It begins again here on the second floor of the ER, with a chair dragged up to the bedside and a journal open atop a hospital blanket. It begins with what feels like the first real conversation the two of them have ever had. They talk past—though Felix's has more relevance and more he is not ready to say yet. They talk future—a future where Lillie can write again, where Felix can enjoy a sunny day without the looming fear of sullying it. Between these two places there is an obvious gap. They talk about how to bridge it.

"We need to know more first," Felix says. "We need to talk to someone who has expertise."

"Maybe, but that someone might take time to find. I think there's plenty we can do right now."

Felix pauses, looks at her. He's noticed that when she's thinking, she parts her mouth a bit, so just the faintest rim of her upper teeth show. A doll deep in thought. "Like what?"

Lillie coughs, and automatically Felix hands her the glass of water from the bedside table. She takes a sip of it and grimaces. "God, this tastes like sewer water."

Felix smirks. "Somehow I doubt that."

"Well, it's not good," Lillie says, but takes another sip anyway before setting it down. "Look, I—I don't know. But what if there was a way I could cure us?"

"How do you figure?"

"My curse keeps bringing things I write into reality, but always on accident," Lillie says, resting back against the pillows. Her eyes hold Felix's for a moment, before she looks up, examining the ceiling. "What if I could find a way to do it on purpose? If I could write something, a line in a poem maybe, that would get rid of our curses?"

"How can a curse get rid of a curse?" Felix says, and when he sees the disappointment so clear on Lillie's face, he softens his words, his tone. "I don't know, Lillie. It sounds like we'd be breaking some rule. It sounds almost too easy."

She looks at him again, her eyes open and earnest. "We won't know until we try, will we?"

There's a knock on the door, but no pause for an answer before two strangers—at least to Felix—enter the room. One is a tall, lean man whose round eyes and the generous curve of his smile remind him of Lillie; and the other is a woman, wearing a dress shirt and slacks despite the odd hour, her hair pulled back from her face in small, neat cornrows.

The man deposits a borderline excessive amount of plastic-wrapped snacks and treats on the nearest counter. He picks up a honey bun for himself and tears it open. "Are you Felix?"

Felix glances at Lillie, briefly. "So you've heard about me."

"And all the weird shit that started happening the second Lillie met you," Mira interjects, bumping the door shut behind her with her hip.

"Mira!" Lillie hisses.

Felix squirms under Mira's gaze. The intensity in her eyes, so dark a brown they look black, comes not from a place of anger, aggression—but love, a love so honest it has no problem bearing its teeth when the time is right.

"None of this is adding up," Mira goes on. "Or at least not in your favor. How do we know all of this isn't your fault?"

"Oh, come on, Mira," the man Felix assumes must be Lillie's brother says, between mouthfuls of honey bun. "Cut the man some slack. From what Lillie said, they have two very different phenomenons going on, anyway. They're probably not related."

"We don't know they're not related, Moses."

The sound of Felix's chair squeaking across the beige tiles then makes the room go quiet again. Felix coughs his nerves from his throat. "I wish I could give you a more sure answer, but I'll tell you what I've been telling Lillie: the truth is, I don't know. None of us know," he says. "What I think is that magic, for lack of a better term, is a living, breathing thing, existing somewhere we can't see it most of the time. Most people walk their whole lives without ever seeing or feeling it. Other times, it reaches out and touches us. Sometimes it buries into our skin where we can't dig it out. It doesn't always do it the same way; I don't know if it all comes from the same place. We have more questions than we do answers and it's always felt that way."