Rules for Orion

chapter six

Six: Avery
August 13, 8:00 PM. Cobalt, VA.

I have met up with my sister. She has convinced me to trespass into someone's fête.
     I think this house is actually somewhat outside of Dwyer; it is on the edge of the border woods. It's a log cabin that probably once belonged to a woodsman, but now the residents (based on the picture above the hearth) seem just as dependent and spoiled as everyone else here.
There are people everywhere, both older than my body (twenty-one) and younger than my self (seventeen); they are spilling out onto the lawns, mingling with the very edge of the woods, pushing up into the second and third floors.
     Kyara (my sister; well, step) claims that she heard some girls our age on a bus into Dwyer talking about it. (She likes to say our age to pretend we are the same age, but she is two years younger.)
     "Think," she says, "everyone in our age range in one place, just right to pick. And this place is strong, too. Can you not feel it? As we get closer?"
     "No," I say, because I can't. I've never been able to sense the things she senses. Except for human things, but that has always been next to useless.
     Until now, I suppose.
     "Half-breed," she says, but she sounds as if she is joking. "I should say you are lucky, now. You find it easier to fit in?"
     "Half-and-half," I say, "does not make it easier."
     "Ah. So it is just as difficult."
"Isychia." Be quiet.
    She knocks her shoulder into mine, so hard that I almost stumble. She is wearing so many glamours—to hide her wings, her teeth, her eyes, her skin—that she almost looks human. A pale, tired human. She has been here long enough to start hurting, almost five days. There will be nothing left of her soon. That is why she is so attracted to this building—its mythos. Its magic.
     This world sucks you dry.
     She needs to find a body. Tonight.
     "Get someone older," I advise her. "So you will not have to go back home to a family."
     "What if I want someone to provide for me? You have to live on your own."
     "Alright. Fair enough. Choose whoever you want."
     She leans into embrace me as we near the edge of the woods. People are out on the grass, light from the inside of the house leaking out.
     Kyara wrinkles her nose against my shoulder. "When was the last time you bathed?"
     "...Three days ago?"
     "Go in. Use theirs."
     "I am not doing that."
     "Come on." She grabs my wrist. "Come inside with me."
     "Kyara, no—"
     "—Aedui! Come on!"
     Although she is laughing, I know she is serious. I follow her out of the woods and into the house. No one tries to stop us, or even asks our names.
     Kyara is about to disappear into a throng of people in the living room; I hold her back. The whole place smells of soured wine.
"Proséche," I say. Be careful. My chin rests neatly on the top of her head.
     "I know."
"Na asfalís," I say. Be safe. Her shoulders are small between my arms.
     "I know."
"Na éxypnos," I say. Be smart. She pulls from my grip.
     "I know, Aedui," she says. "Only death. Untraceable. I know what I am doing."
     I nod. "I do not want to know you have slept with someone."
     She gives me a look. "You have slept with someone."
     I laugh. "You cannot know that."
     She digs a finger into my chest. "You would never have killed someone so pretty." She flashes me a saber-toothed smile. "I will see you. S'agapó."
     I push my way up the stairs to find a bathroom.

    The cabin is enormous. I find one bathroom with a long line, one occupied, and one inhabited by a disgruntled couple before I stumble through the kitchen into pantry and out into the side yard.
     It is almost quiet out here. The music from the house is a muted hum pulsing with synthesized percussion.
     Then I see it. The holy, gods-cursed grail. A  lone, outdoor pipe. And no one is around.
     The pipe is next to an empty chicken coop. The feed buckets are spotless apart from cobwebs; they obviously have not been used in a while. I heft up all three and fill them. I kick off my shoes.
     The pipe is still running, turning the ground to mud around my knees when I kneel. I push frigid water over my face, not caring about my clothes. It falls back onto my shoulders, my chest, down onto my stomach and legs.
     I lean forward, casting the force of the pipe directly to the back of my neck. I work plain water into my scalp and feel it carve a river between my shoulder blades.
     I only pull off my shirt when the soaked fabric begins to grind into my skin.
I have been too afraid to go to the ocean here, but it seems necessary now. Why is the house so far away from it? I would run there, if I could, but I cannot leave Kyara.
     I wash my shirt in one of the buckets, scrubbing the grains of the cloth against one another to get it clean. I am unbuttoning my pants when someone makes a choked, surprised sound.
     Two people, obscured in the shadow of the house, are staring at me.
     I wash my shirt. They keep staring at me. I finish pulling off my pants and washing them. They keep staring at me. I crouch behind the coop as best as I can, more for their sake than mine, while I wash my underwear.
     I turn off the pipe. Silence, aside from the noise of the festivities. But those are elsewhere. For all I know, those two people are still staring at me.
     Since I am technically (in all senses of the word) homeless, I have been carrying around the bag I took from the once-Avery's room, so I have new clothes on me. I did not bring any sort of towel, though. A shirt will have to be temporarily sacrificed.
     I am pulling on my pants when the two people leave the shadows and start to approach the pipe.
     I do not know what I expect, but it is not for both of them to be covered in blood.
     I do not know what I expect, but it is not for both of them to turn the pipe back on and start to scrub the rusty stains from their faces and arms, and to try to blot it from their clothes.
     I do not know what I expect, but it is not for them to be calm. To laugh, and for one to shriek when the other splashes them.
     I do not know what I expect, but it is not for one of them to be Logan the Target Employee.
Or just Logan, now, I guess. We are no longer in Target.
     I do not know what to do. Surely he recognizes me. But he does not say anything. Is it common etiquette to ignore someone after a strange chance meeting?
     I feel a little annoyed about him ignoring me. More than I thought I would.
     I stand and watch them finish, my shoes tied by their laces to the strap of my bag. They do not pay any mind to me.
     Logan seems different.
     For one, strangely enough, he seems more comfortable than he did before. More comfortable, cleaning his body of blood using an outdoor pipe with this girl, than standing in a Target with me.
     Alright.
     Secondly, he looks different. I do not know exactly what it is. His hair is wet, casting drops onto the shoulders of his shirt. He has missed a very obvious smear of blood on his cheek.
     Perhaps I just do not remember him that well.

    When they turn off the water, Logan pulls on a dark jacket and hefts a pastel pink pack, hiking it up over his arm. The girl takes her soaked hair that she has unbraided to clean and wrings it out, flicking it towards Logan.
     "Fuck off," he says, but he is laughing. The pair seems almost celebratory.
     "What time is it?" the girl asks. Logan digs around in the pack and stares at something that glows for a second.
     "Nine fourteen."
     "We can hang for a while, then?"
     Logan shakes his head. He is laughing. Always laughing.
     "I actually..." he says. "I left something inside. I'll meet you in the car?"
     The girl nods and holds her hand out for the pack. Logan gives it to her without question. He grabs something from it just before she walks away.
     "Passenger!" he calls after her. She raises her middle finger without looking back; she disappears around the corner of the house.
     Logan does not go back into the house. Instead, he looks at me. Something in my stomach leaps up. He crosses the lawn, hands in his jacket pockets.
     "Why were you..." he stops, maybe five feet away from me. We are on even ground; I am taller than him. He gestures to the pipes and troughs.
     "I—" I falter. "I have sanitary standards."
     Logan breathes a laugh, although I did not mean to cause him to. "Okay. What're you doing here?"
     "I mean..." I also gesture to the pipe and troughs. "Sanitation."
     He makes as if to lick his bottom lip but bites his tongue. "Okay. Can't shower at home?"
     I point at him. "No questions."
     He moves his hands from his pockets to hold them up, like he is showing that he has no weapons.
     "Besides," I say. "I am not the strange one right now."
     Logan's hands are back in his pockets. He grins as he stares at the ground. "Right."
     "Are you going to explain?"
     He looks back up, still smiling. "No."
     "Alright."
     Logan tilts his head back and around in an almost unnerving way, all the while chewing on his bottom lip. "D'you have a phone number?"
     "Do I have a—? What?"
     "Phone number." Logan pulls the glowing thing from his pocket and tosses it to me; I barely catch it.
     A screen of numbers faces me.
     "Three, three, eight, four," he says.
     I do not know what he means, but I do as he says.
     "Click contacts."
     I look up at him, confused, and he laughs. He crosses the grass between us and reaches for the thing in my hands.
     "Here," he says, and I look over his shoulder.
Avery, he types. "Last name?"
     "Uh..." for a second I struggle to remember. "Lunden."
Lunden. "Huh. I guess, then," he says. He turns to face me. "I'll..."
     "Go. You will go—you have someone waiting."
     Logan tilts his head, still looking at me. "...Okay. Will I see you?"
     "I do not know."
     He keeps looking at me.
"Go," I say.
     He shrugs. "Okay," he says, laughing. I still don't mean to be funny. "See you around."
     "Doubt it."
     Logan laughs again, half-concealed in his breathing. He throws me a two-fingered salute once his back is turned. He pulls his hood up and disappears.
     I hug my bag to my chest, lean back against the fence, and wait for my organs to calm down. And I wait for my sister.